Alabama family seeking answers after Black woman found dead in police van

by Monique Beals - 10/18/21 1:41 PM ET

A Black woman’s family and state lawmakers are calling for answers after police found her body in a prisoner-transport van in Huntsville, Ala., 12 days after her disappearance.

The van where Christina Nance was found dead was located in a busy municipal parking lot, according to The Washington Post.

Ben Crump, a high-profile civil rights attorney, is representing Nance’s family.

“We will get to the truth of what happened to Christina Nance,” Crump said in a statement. “We lift up Christina’s family with prayer as they mourn this devastating loss.”

Nance’s cause of death is still under investigation, as officials said an autopsy found no signs of trauma or foul play. A police inquiry is ongoing, and a toxicology report is expected to be released in the next few weeks, the Post reported.

After Nance entered the van, she would not have been able to exit on her own; there were no handles inside, as it was intended to transport prisoners. However, video surveillance indicated police officers routinely walked through the lot, and Huntsville Deputy Police Chief DeWayne McCarver said the van’s windows were open and would have been easy to pop out.

“We just wish that she would have hollered out to someone or something, because unfortunately there were what we see as potential opportunities for this to not be a tragedy,” McCarver said, according to the Post.

NEWS ALERT: @AttorneyCrump has been retained by the family of Christina Nance, a 29-year-old Black woman who was found deceased in a police van at the Huntsville Police Department headquarters on Thursday, October 7. pic.twitter.com/yjYKXjnO09

— Ben Crump Law, PLLC (@BenCrumpLaw) October 13, 2021

On Friday, Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels (D) called for an independent autopsy and a thorough investigation into Nance’s death.

“Hopefully, many of the questions raised by the community and the family of this young woman will be answered,” Daniels said in a statement to AL.com. “We need to fully understand what happened to Ms. Nance so that we may prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future.”

Surveillance footage, which Nance’s family was unsatisfied with due to its poor quality, indicated that a person was walking through the parking lot outside police headquarters on Sept. 25 before entering the van. The last movement seen inside the van was on Sept. 28, according to the Post. Nance’s body was discovered on Oct. 7.

“The video was not clear enough to indicate that that was our sister Christina Nance,” Nance’s sister Whitney Nance said, according to the Post. “It was just very heartbreaking to know that we didn’t get the clarification that we really needed, that we wanted.”

McCarver noted at a press conference that investigators had analyzed hundreds of hours of video related to the incident, the Post reported. He added that department policy requires that police vehicles remain locked and that Christina Nance should not have been able to enter the vehicle at all.

“It is an accountability issue on our part,” McCarver said. “That should not have happened. And now we have to look at that, and we have to make sure that we have things in place so that does not happen again.”

The department was familiar with Christina Nance, as she had received unspecified resources from members of the crisis intervention team, a group that treats people with mental illness, according to the Post.

The Hill has reached out to the Huntsville Police Department for more information.

Tags Alabama Benjamin Crump Christina Nance