DA Ryan’s repeated missteps motivated BLM protesters to gather at her Lowell, MA office to demand she be removed from the investigation about the tragic death of black LGBT teen Mikayla Miller. “Plain and simple, we want DA Marian Ryan to recuse herself and call in the FBI for a complete and thorough investigation,” said protester Keren Prescott.” At the May 6th vigil for Mikayla Miller Strothers said that DA Ryan wouldn’t talk to her personally until 12 days after her daughter was found dead in a Hopkinton, MA forest. DA Ryan excused her conduct by saying people from her office spoke to Strothers, but that’s not the same as taking the time to personally speak to a grieving mother who wants to know about the investigation about her child’s death.
Then Strother’s found out the DA made a false statement 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.” Furthermore, one should consider why anyone would want to record their fitness data during their last hour on earth. Also, people tend to walk more steps when they’re walking slow than when they’re walking fast or have longer legs, so even if it were true there is no way to know the exact distance a person walked by the number of steps they walked.
Then the DA said the assailants who attacked Mikayla at her home the evening before she was found dead had adequate alibis, when they didn’t. And she insisted that police couldn’t obtain the surveillance videos at Mikayla’s apartment compound the day she was assaulted and when she left her apartment for the last time alive, which can provide the police with vital information such as if someone picked up Mikayla in a car, what direction she walked, or if she was killed at the Windsor apartments. But sockpuppet said that “forensics can retrieve a back-up copy stored somewhere, either in the surveillance equipment, or on servers the cameras were connected to.” So, Ryan refuses to look at primary evidence.
And at the beginning of the investigation her spokeswoman said, “This is not a suspicious death investigation and there is no foul play,” even though they hadn’t and still have not proven Mikayla wasn’t murdered. To prove someone committed suicide, it’s not enough to show it’s possible they committed suicide. It’s also necessary to disprove murder-completely. If Mikayla died by hanging as the medical examiner said, that doesn’t disprove murder because everyone knows it’s possible to hang a person to death.
Only, after the Black Lives Matter campaign was formed to counter DA Marian Ryan’s campaign of misinformation and hiding evidence did her boldness decrease, so now she insinuates Mikayla committed suicide instead of stating it boldly. For example, during a press conference about Mikayla’s death certificate DA Ryan claimed that her office, “will continue to explore every investigative angle necessary as we do that work and intend to issue a complete and thorough report at the conclusion of the investigation,” yet at the end of her speech she said, “Please be intentional in checking on the mental health of your loved ones and the children in your communities. Nothing matters more. If you are thinking about harming yourself call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.”
There are benefits to advising people to check the mental health of their loved ones and to providing a suicide prevention number, but not in that speech because there is a major controversy that Ryan’s office wrongly pronounced Mikayla’s death a suicide possibly to protect white suspects from prosecution of murdering a black girl. So, considering the context it seems she is slyly saying that people should believe that Mikayla committed suicide. Based on all of this, DA Marian Ryan has to be recused from the investigation. I also agree with folks who think she should be removed from office.