Pictured is Hershawna Rias
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
CLEVELAND, Ohio- A 17-year-old Black girl's body was discovered Thursday afternoon at Martin Luther King Park on Cleveland's largely Black east side with multiple gun shot wounds to her head, police said Friday as the unidentified killers or killers remain at large and police have no suspects.
Hershawna Rias was found by park personnel lying dead in the grass about 11:40 a.m., according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The park is at East 107th Street at Elk Avenue.
Rias was reported missing on this most recent occasion on April 6.
Community activists called for swift action in the case.
"We want the killer or killers of this 17-year-old Black Cleveland girl found dead in a city park with multiple gun shot wounds to the head apprehended, said longtime Cleveland activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads imperial Women Coalition, the grassroots group found around the murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland by serial killer Anthony Sowell, who died earlier this year in prison while on death row.
Coleman called the gruesome murder "inexcusable and a pattern of unsolved murders of young Black Cleveland women and girls that law enforcement officials and city leaders appear to be ignoring."