Folks, someone complained on my last diary that this story is difficult to follow, so I’m going to delete the original post in this series, The Mikayla Miller Story, and replace it with this version that is revised to take account recent reporting.
POLICE MISCONDUCT LEADS TO BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTEST
Mikayla Miller, a black high school honors student, was found dead in the woods of a predominantly white, wealthy Massachusetts town. The police said a jogger found her hanging from a tree with a belt around her neck. The previous evening her mother reported to the police that a group of white people drove to her apartment, confronted her daughter, then two of them shoved and punched her daughter. The victim’s injuries were obvious, her lip was bleeding, and this was noted by the police; yet the officers claimed there was no evidence to file charges against the perpetrators.
The next morning the police notified Calvina Strothers, Mikayla’s mom, that her daughter died of suicide but provided no evidence. That same day Strothers asked for “the police logs of both the attack and the discovery of her daughter’s body — but the police did not provide either.” After being stonewalled by the police and the DA’s office Strothers sought assistance from LGBT and Black Lives Matter sympathizers. I attended the May 6th vigil for Mikayla Miller that was televised nationally.
Hundreds of supporters gathered at the town common to demand justice for Mikayla.
THE TOWN
Hopkinton is 93.1% white and .8% black. Most other residents are Asian. It is the 13th wealthiest town in MA, a state with 351 towns and cities. According to the 2019 Census median household income is $157,353, twice the state average.
Mikaela’s high school is among the top 1% of best schools in Massachusetts. Hopkinton has the 12th best public school system in MA. Money magazine listed Hopkinton as the 19th best place to live in the US. Hopkinton is reported to be the 2nd safest city in Massachusetts.
EVIDENCE OF A COVERUP
- The Hopkinton, MA police log all crimes and send the log to the local paper every week that is also published online. They refused to log the assault against Mikayla or the discovery of her body the next day.
- Police refused Strother’s request for a police report of the suicide of her own daughter.
- Police would not charge the teens who attacked Mikayla though they saw the physical injuries Mikayla suffered and the damage to the apartment building. And the police didn’t provide Strothers with a copy of the report that she herself reported.
- District Attorney Marian Ryan claimed that Mikayla’s fitness app recorded that she walked “1,316 steps between 9 and 10 p.m., a distance that's consistent with the distance between her home and where she was found.” Yet, “Strothers said Miller’s phone was not activated and could not have tracked that information, according to information she received from Apple.”
- The teenagers’ alibis aren’t strong. They are weak. Yet the DA implied she is not going to investigate the teens because of their ridiculous alibis.
- Sergeant O’Brien tried to prevent Strothers from going to the media stating that her daughter’s LGBQ status should be kept secret, but Strothers said everybody knew her daughter was gay. At the vigil she added that Sergeant O’Brien “harassed my family.”
- To the advantage of the perpetrators, authorities claim that surveillance cameras at Mikayla’s apartment complex weren’t working when she was assaulted there but suddenly started working one day after her body was found. The surveillance system was new, yet strangely malfunctioned. That would have provided evidence to prove the teens assaulted Mikayla and also what direction she went when she left her apartment for the last time.
- Mikayla left her home for the last time carrying a backpack. The police said she committed suicide and implied that she hung herself, but they admit her backpack was found near her body. If she had decided to hang herself in the forest near her apartment it was not necessary to bring a backpack. A backpack has the same function as a woman’s purse: to carry money to buy things, a water bottle and snacks, makeup to reapply during social occasions, a book to read on the bus, etc. If Mikayla had left her home in a traumatized state with the sole purpose of ending her life she would have only brought the belt to hang herself. It’s possible she went out to socialize or work at her computer in one of the numerous common areas of the Windsor apartments, but the backpack proves it is 100% certain that at the time Mikayla left her home she was not going out to kill herself.
- It’s ridiculous to imply that Mikayla walked through a forest with zero visibility for half a mile to find a tree to hang herself from when there are hundreds of trees in the dense forest next to her apartment.
- There has been so much racist policing in this area that DA Ryan created a new job, Director of Racial Justice Initiatives to deal with these problems. My own experience indicates that the Hopkinton Police are corrupt and racist, because when I-an ethnic minority-made reports about Anglo people committing crimes I was ignored, stonewalled, treated with contempt, and the reports were falsified the same as happened to Ms. Strothers when she tried to get justice.
