Authorities are conducting a search for an 8-year-old girl named Relisha Rudd who has been missing from the Washington D.C. area for close to a month now.
Their investigation has led them to identify one man as a suspected abductor — a 51-year-old man named Kahlil Malik Tatum.
Rudd was last seen on Feb. 26 at the D.C. Shelter for Families which is located at the old D.C. General Hospital in Southeast where she had been living with her mother and stepfather. Tatum was a janitor at the same homeless shelter.
An Amber Alert was issued on March 20 in states from Pennsylvania to Florida and a $25,000 reward has been set in effort to advance the search.
New surveillance video from a D.C. hotel has recently been identified, which shows a young girl and a man walking down the hotel hallway who police believe to be Rudd and Tatum.
Rudd’s case has also been picked up by the Black and Missing Foundation, a non-profit organization helping to raise more awareness in missing persons cases, particularly those involving minority individuals.
According to the BAMFI website, Tatum has been charged with the death of his 51-year-old wife Andrea Denise Tatum, whose body was found in a hotel Thursday at a Red Roof Inn on Oxon Hill Road in D.C.
Individuals are being asked to keep an eye out for any sign of Rudd, who stands 4 feet tall and weighs 75 pounds. She has medium-length black hair and brown eyes, but information on what she was last seen wearing or any identifying marks or characteristics are currently unknown.
For more information on Rudd’s case, or other black and missing individuals, visit the BAMFI website.
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