Family of missing Mississippi man found dead suspects foul play in his disappearance
The family of Dau Mabil is seeking answers about what led to his death after his body was pulled from a Mississippi River weeks after his disappearance.
It had been 24 days since Dau Mabil vanished while on a walk in Jackson, Mississippi. And in the last few of those days, his family and a growing number of supporters began to think the unthinkable, that a body fished from the Pearl River over the weekend was his. And worse, that he was murdered. On Thursday, they got confirmation of the former, while the latter worry still looms.
“He was always my little brother,” Bul Mabil, Mabil’s older brother, told NBC News. “To just think that my brother is no longer here. It’s just very devastating to me. But I’m going to fight for justice the way he used to fight.”
The announcement put an end to one chapter in what had been a gut-wrenching mystery for Dau Mabil’s family, friends and community. On March 25 around noon, Dau Mabil, 33, left home to take a walk along a familiar trail. He never returned. Video from homes and businesses in the area capture his walk through the streets of his Belhaven neighborhood, and then to a wooded area where he simply disappears. Some eight hours later, his wife reported him missing to police. In the following days, police and friends scoured the area. Those days melted into frustrating weeks without any hint of Mabil. Then, a body was found in the river and Mabil’s family’s frustration dripped into fear.
Dau Mabil vanished while on a walk in Jackson, Miss.via WBLTIn a statement released on social media on Thursday, Lawrence County Sheriff Ryan Everett, whose jurisdiction is where Mabil’s body was located, some 60 miles south of where he was last seen alive, confirmed that the recovered body was indeed Mabil’s and asked the public to keep the man’s “family and loved ones in your thoughts and prayers as they face tomorrow and the days ahead.”
Everett went further, saying, in all-caps, that a preliminary autopsy “DID NOT” show any foul play.
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