Up next
The Wages of Cynicism
Jahnay Brown graduated from Cornell University last year and moved back in with her mother in Pennsylvania. But she gradually cut off contact with other family and friends, finally moving to Los Angeles and disappearing completely.
She last contacted an ex-boyfriend on October 16, the last day she was known to have been seen. Her sister reported her missing a month later, and on November 19, Los Angeles police issued an Ebony Alert for the 23-year-old.
She was last seen on West 8th Street in Los Angeles and is described as 5 feet 7 inces tall and about 125 pounds.
Her sister, Jahque Bryan-Gooden, told NBC News that she hadn’t spoken with her sister since sometime last year by email but that it’s not like her to vanish completely with no one hearing from her. And gradually, she stopped talking with all her friends.
On August t, Bryan-Gooden said, she sent an email to her ex-boyfriend that said “Gone for the last few months. Back, Moving to a new city Monday. Bye.” And then on October 16, she emailed the ex-boyfriend again, suggesting they get married.
“I think we should get married and I think we should work in industry,” the email said. “I was just in contact with the commissioner of the Department of Water Management in a city and it’s a brilliant idea.”
The ex-boyfriend confirmed receipt of those emails and their content. And Bryan-Gooden says she has spoken to people in Los Angeles who reported seeing her, but none of those sightings are positively confirmed.
“We keep meeting people that say, like, ‘Oh, I saw her at this bus stop,’ or, ‘I saw her in this area,’” Bryan-Gooden said. “The random people that we find that say, ‘Yes, I saw her,’ are all near that street. Like, they all say they saw her in that area.”
LAPD said last week they had no update on Bryan’s case.
“It is incredibly tiring and frustrating that no matter how much I know it seems like it’s incredibly slow to move on getting any proof,” Bryan-Gooden told NewsNation this week.
Meanwhile, former California state Sen. Steven Bradford stepped into the case last week, noting the massive international media attention when Hawaii woman Hannah Kobayashi was reported missing, and ultimately found to have disappeared “voluntarily,” and the relative silence around Bryan’s disappearance.
“When Black young women and children disappear, resources are not committed to find them,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “We need to ask ourselves, why is that?”
Kobayashi “disappeared almost in the exact same time frame,” he said. “How does one race rise to the level of national attention and Miss Bryan’s case barely gets a whimper?”
Anyone with information is asked to contact Det. Avalos in the LAPD Missing Persons Unit at (213) 996-1800 or leave an anonymous tip at (800) 222-8477.
