‘I want her to come home’: Walks highlighting missing, murdered women, girls start in Crownpoint
Navajo Times | Donovan Quintero
Walkers call attention to the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women Friday.
CROWNPOINT
Kade Chee, 8, looks at a photo of his mom, Tanya T. Begay, as he joins a group portrait on Friday morning north of Crownpoint. He is participating in the first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Awareness Walk.
As most people in the group smile for the picture taking, Chee does not. His gaze stays fixed on his mom. That’s all he can do now — look at pictures of her that were taken over two years ago. She’s been missing since Friday, March 3, 2017. His aunt, Cassandra Bia, said he and his young sister, Zoe, were with their grandma when Tanya was last seen.
Bia said Tanya had asked to use a Dodge Neon but when she was refused, her then-boyfriend went inside the trailer, got the keys, and left with Tanya sitting on the passenger side.
Having seen her sister in a hospital with wounds all over her head from a glass coffee pot allegedly wielded by her abusive boyfriend, Bia has no doubt that he knows something about her disappearance. At the time of the domestic assault, Bia asked Gallup police if she could file domestic charges for her sister, but was told it had to be Tanya.
She asked her sister if she had pressed charges. “She said kept saying, ‘Yeah, I did, I did.’ Come to find out, she didn’t,” Bia said. Police were unable to arrest the boyfriend because they had no proof.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow