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Finding a Black person hanging from a tree should never sit right in anyone’s spirit.
Yolna Lubrin’s family and the Orlando community are demanding answers after she was found dead last Thursday, Sept. 28, with a rope around her neck in the backyard of a house where she did not live. We’re not forensic pathologists, but this doesn’t strike us as the type of incident that can so quickly be ruled a suicide. However, according to the Orlando Sentinel, authorities quickly ruled that the 31-year-old’s death was an act of self-harm, but Yolna’s family ain’t trying to hear all that…
“My sister is an African-American woman. Why is she getting swept under the rug?” Naomi Lubrin, her sister, asked at the rally. “She was brilliant, she was amazing, she was laughter, but most of all she was loud.”
Local activists aren’t being quiet about the shady nature of Lubrin’s death nor the warp-speed conclusions that police investigators have jumped to…
The Sentinel reports that over 60 people, including Pastor Carl Soto, pulled up to the Orlando City Hall earlier this week to call out the Chief of Police and to demand answers.
“Today we are calling out Chief Eric Smith, and we are urging him to have his department immediately rescind this allegation of suicide and thoroughly investigate all aspects of Mrs. Lubrin’s death,” Soto said.
In response to the public anger over their investigative process, the Orlando Police Department released the following statement:
“Although her cause of death is still being investigated and will ultimately be decided by the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office, the deceased individual’s documented history of mental illness, witness statements, cellular communications from Ms. Lubrin, and the physical evidence observed during the autopsy all point to suicide,” OPD said Tuesday in an email to media outlets.
Naomi Lubrin says that the police are not being forthcoming with information nor are they reaching out to the family to provide support or answer questions. In her eyes, they have been abandoned by the city and left to their own devices. Following the public press conference, it was reported that Naomi was able to speak to investigators but there are no details about what came of that meeting.
If you know like we know, this case could very easily get pushed to the bottom of the pile, and the police will just go on about their lives as if nothing happened. Hopefully, the Lubrin family, the Orlando community and media outlets will continue to apply pressure so that both transparency and justice can prevail.
