Christina Nance had been missing for 12 days when a police officer spotted a pair of shoes next to a prisoner transport van parked outside the Huntsville Police Department in Alabama.
Surveillance footage released by the Huntsville Police Department shows Nance going into the van parked outside police headquarters on Sept. 25.
The family was able to view the video Friday, Oct. 15th, ahead of the media briefing. There is major skepticism from Nance’s family, who question the video and the premise behind their loved one’s passing.
According to the Washington Post, an officer walking past the van, which Huntsville police said was last used in March, noticed her body. Nearly two weeks later, her family still doesn’t know how she ended up there in the first place.
Last Monday, Oct. 11, Madison County Coroner Tyler Berryhill performed an autopsy on Nance and found “no foul play” involved in her death “nor any findings of trauma.” However, Nance’s official cause of death is pending further investigation.
“We used that van to transport prisoners,” Deputy Police Chief Dwayne McCarver told WAFF, a local news outlet. “Once you’re in that van, you can’t get out of that van. Somebody has to let you out of the van.”
Her body, which was discovered on Oct. 7, five days after the 29-year-old was reported missing, has led to her family demanding much-needed answers to this traumatic incident.
“We do not believe that our sister would just randomly walk to a van and climb in it,” Christina’s sister Whitney told WAFF. “First of all, why wasn’t the van locked on police property?”
“The video was not clear enough to indicate that that was our sister Christina Nance,” Nance’s sister Whitney Nance told WAFF. “It was just very heartbreaking to know that we didn’t get the clarification that we really needed, that we wanted.”
Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who has represented the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, issued a news release on Oct. 13, Wednesday, announcing that he would represent the Nance family as the investigation continues onward.
“We will get to the truth of what happened to Christina Nance, the young Black woman found dead in the police van in front of the Huntsville Police Department. We lift up Christina’s family with prayer as they mourn this devastating loss,” Crump said.