As a child, Tioni Theus was a ball of energy. After school she liked to play golf and dance. On weekends, she’d go to the movies and the mall with her older cousin. Driving back home at the end of the day to her family’s apartment in South Los Angeles, California, she’d ask: “What are we doing next?”
Everything changed when Tioni was ۱۳. Her mother was hit by a car and critically injured, leaving her unable to take care of her daughter. While her mom recovered, Tioni lived with other family members. But the accident left Tioni angry, her older cousin Nafeesah Kincy said, and she struggled to understand that her life had permanently changed.
Tioni started talking to strangers online, Kincy noticed, and hung out with unfamiliar people, including older teen boys and young men. Then she left her family’s care and would bounce between random people’s houses, Kincy said, or spend nights with a boyfriend at a hotel. Each time she saw Tioni, Kincy would implore her to come back to her family.
Over the next two years, Tioni stopped going to school and became “lost in the streets”, said Kincy, who would take her cousin to get food, or meet at another family member’s house to drop off care packages with deodorant, clean underwear and tampons. Family members pleaded with Tioni to stay with one of them permanently.
“It was devastating because I couldn’t protect her,” she said. “We did everything we knew to do.”
Then, on ۸ January ۲۰۲۱, Tioni’s body was found on a stretch of highway with a gunshot wound to her neck. She was ۱۶. How she ended up there remains unknown.
Tioni’s killing shocked many in Los Angeles, but it outraged LA’s Black community. In the weeks following her death, there were repeated calls for a swift investigation, for compassion from local leaders, and tangible measures to curb the violence. Black women and girls make up about four percent of the population in the LA region, but represent an outsized share of female homicide victims.
Local and state leaders said they heard their calls. They put together a $۱۱۵,۰۰۰ reward for information, and the city commissioned a report to better understand why Black women are killed more often than women of other races. But five years later, there have not been any arrests for her killing, and families, community organizers and violence prevention workers say not enough has changed to prevent future deaths.
Families and organizers want local governments and police to be more outspoken about the harms Black women and teen girls face, to study the dynamics more deeply, to fund programs that address the intersection of domestic and community violence, and to make gender-based violence a key component of the region’s general violence prevention strategy.
“We are in a climate where Black women are the most unprotected species,” Kincy said. “We’re not looked at as human. Even our own men don’t feel the need to protect, and it’s scary, it’s sad and disheartening.”
At the same time, some of the root causes of this violence, including misogyny and long-held stereotypes about Black women and girls, can’t be legislated or policed away. So Black women in LA are doing it themselves, using taskforces, rallies, summer programs and podcasts to share their stories. Doing this, they say, can grow the number of people who are looking out for them – which is particularly important right now after the Trump administration cut millions in federal funds for gun violence prevention.
“It feels like people just don’t care,” said Ken’Niyia, ۱۵. “It feels like Black women are not seen as something that should be protected.”
‘We talk about things that are important to know’
Ken’Niyia, a ۱۵-year-old track-and-field athlete who sports two long french braids, lives in Inglewood, one of several Black- and brown-majority cities in LA county. Over the summer, she enrolled in a program that gave teen girls a place to connect with each other, share their experiences and learn about systemic racism, gender-based violence, rape culture, and the myriad ways generations of Black women have overcome them.
The program has given the girls the rare opportunity to talk about their shared experiences of feeling unsafe in their neighborhoods, and understanding the ways stereotypes about Black women and girls influence their lives, they said.
“We talk about things that are important to know when you’re a teen trying to navigate life,” said ۱۷-year-old Laniyah. “It gives us Black girls a chance to be vulnerable with each other.”
The girls say they’re regularly followed by men in cars and on the streets while they walk home, to school or the store. They’ve witnessed shootings and lost loved ones to gunshot wounds. They’ve heard stories of girls their age being killed on the streets and in domestic violence incidents.
“Even if it’s not happening to me specifically, just to know that it is happening makes me feel unsure,” Ken’Niyia said.
In addition to not feeling safe, several of the girls said they felt left behind, or that the rest of the city was judging them. “It feels like anything that happens to us, Black women in Los Angeles, is our fault,” said Dalila, ۱۷.
There have been several shootings outside Dalila’s home, including one two years ago, when her cousin was shot in the mouth. The cousin survived.
All of these girls live in the areas that have long seen an outsized share of the city’s violence and systemic neglect, where people live on meager incomes and access to grocery stores and thriving business corridors are scant.
Living here puts girls like Dalila at a higher risk of violence compared to their peers of other races and income brackets. And when they are harmed, Dalila said, they don’t get the same compassion white women do.
“People say, ‘She lived in South Central. She’s a product of her environment,’” she said.
The workshops the girls attended were organized by the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP), a nonprofit that offers mentorship to teen girls and queer youth and educates local high-schoolers on gender-based violence and the social issues that contribute to it.
Though the organization was founded ۱۵ years before Tioni’s death, her short life has galvanized the group, said its director, Sikivu Hutchinson. “I don’t like to say [Tioni’s] a symbol, but she is unfortunately representative of so many things. It’s really just symptomatic of the lack of protection, lack of harm reduction, and the lack of prevention and care,” Hutchinson said.
WLP has been pressuring local officials to focus on the violence Black women and girls face in their schools, homes and neighborhoods. The group is calling for the creation of a youth center in Tioni’s name that would give young people in South Central a safe place to hang out, do homework, and take classes.
“In South Central, we see boarded-up buildings, vacant lots, pot shops and liquor stores, but no youth spaces. All of that is a symptom of the disinvestment in the so-called inner city,” Hutchinson said. “We want all of those resources and services in our community because of the high rates of harm and victimization that young people are experiencing.”
Race and gender disparities
The city of Los Angeles and its police department have touted strong decline in overall homicides in recent years, but domestic violence killings, which overwhelmingly claim the lives of women, have remained a persistent issue. In ۲۰۲۲, LA recorded ۳۹۲ homicides, according to LAPD’s annual homicide report, but by ۲۰۲۴ that number had declined to ۲۸۴. The number of domestic killings remained consistent, though, with ۳۲ murders in ۲۰۲۲ and ۳۳ in ۲۰۲۴. Black women are disproportionately the victims of domestic homicides. Black women make up about ۱۳.۵% of the city’s female population, but a third of its female domestic homicide victims.
This trend also extends to the rest of the county. Black women had the highest homicide rate of any racial group in ۲۰۲۴, according to California department of health data. The only other demographics with high rates are Black and Latino men, who historically have made up most of the region’s homicide victims.
It’s not just LA. Black women across the US have long had a higher risk of being killed than women of other races, according to a ۲۰۲۴ analysis of homicide data by the Violence policy center. That year about ۷۰۰ Black women and about ۱۵۰۰ white women were killed by men. Black women make up ۱۳% of the US female population, white women make up ۵۵%. Black women were most often killed with a gun, by a man they knew.
The city of LA says it’s working to address the high rates of violence by bolstering its response network for domestic violence victims, and by funding programs that can prevent gun violence in the neighborhoods where Black women and girls die most frequently.
The office of the mayor, Karen Bass, pointed to investments the city has made in its nearly ۲۰-year-old gang reduction and youth development (GRYD) program, which operates programs throughout the city, including South Central. Though GRYD is mostly geared toward pulling Black and Latino men and teens out of the cycle of violence, staff also refers families to supportive programs. The program has helped bring down homicides in the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods throughout South Central by almost ۳۰% in ۲۰۲۵, the mayor’s office said.
California has tried to address the issue at a state level, when in ۲۰۲۳ lawmakers created the Ebony Alert, a first-in-the-nation emergency notification system specifically geared towards finding missing Black women and girls. Since the alert became law in ۲۰۲۴, it has been activated for ۱۸۲ people. Of those, ۱۷۵ have been found alive, one was found deceased, according to California highway patrol data.
Still, the racial and gender disparities in victims of violence remain.
Some cities and states have come up with frameworks to address the issue with more fervor. Minnesota created a taskforce made up of elected officials, nonprofit leaders and representatives from law enforcement agencies to specifically look into the killings and disappearances of Black women and girls. The group advises the state’s department of public safety on ways to reduce violence against them, and how to work with service providers to give tailored support to Black victims’ families and domestic violence survivors.
The Minnesota taskforce was in part created in memory of Brittany Clardy, an ۱۸-year-old who was murdered in ۲۰۱۳. Clardy’s family reported her missing after she left to go to a nearby store but then stopped answering calls and texts. She was found dead in her car two weeks later.
The man who ultimately pleaded guilty to her murder was also convicted of murdering another woman, ۲۴-year-old Klaressa Cook, who was found dead in the trunk of a car just months after Clardy.
In the years following Clardy’s killing, her sister, Lakeisha Lee, spoke in front of the state legislature and started a foundation to help support girls who are at risk of being sex-trafficked.
It’s not uncommon for these kinds of efforts to be spurred by people who’ve lost a mother, daughter or sister to violence, said Dr Brittany Lewis, founder and CEO of Research in Action.
“This happens because families endure going to committee hearings to convince people that the death of their family member matters,” she said. “And that what they need is much bigger than the band-aid solutions we’re producing.”
Cases left unsolved
Not only do Black women and girls face disproportionate rates of violence, but when they’re killed, their cases are less likely to be solved. In ۲۰۲۲, the Los Angeles police department solved all killings of Black female victims. But the next year, that rate declined to ۹۰%. In ۲۰۲۴, it plummeted to ۶۷% and in ۲۰۲۵, at a time when the number of homicides in the city was plummeting, just half of the killings of Black women and girls were solved, according to the LAPD’s annual homicide reports.
LA sheriff’s department numbers?
Shalissa Collier, whose daughter Mikeona Johnson was found dead in the trunk of her car in Los Angeles in September ۲۰۲۰, was determined to beat this trend.
After Mikeona’s death, Collier learned that she had long been abused by a former partner and that her daughter had filed for three separate restraining orders against the man.
Collier says she brought these findings to Los Angeles police, but six months later they came to her home to tell her that the department didn’t have any leads and would be closing the case, Collier said. “LAPD pissed me off. I can’t even sugarcoat it,” she recalled.
Collier began organizing candlelight vigils and press conferences in front of the LA county’s district attorney’s office. She also spoke with independent journalists and on the podcast Misogynoir Murders, which highlights the stories of missing and murdered Black women.
In February ۲۰۲۴, the roommate of Johnson and her partner, Phillip Charles Howze, went to police with new information, and Howze was arrested. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to ۱۵ years to life.
With her daughter’s killer sentenced, Collier in October was finally ready to bury her daughter’s ashes, and she held a burial ceremony.
“I felt like it would be fitting to do it, especially after he got his time. Now she can finally rest,” Collier said.
Misogynoir Murders started out as an attempt to center the stories of Black women and girls in the true-crime genre. Now, host Ronnetta Rideout says she sees it as a community service for the families that want to keep the stories of their daughters, sisters and mothers alive.
“[Black women] were still very underrepresented even in stories, even though we’re overrepresented in the actual data,” Rideout said.
LAPD declined to respond to questions about its initial decision to close Mikeona Johnson’s case. When asked about the department’s approach to solving the homicides of Black women and girls specifically, public information officer Jeff Lee said LAPD “takes all acts of violence seriously, and every homicide is thoroughly investigated. Detectives follow all available leads and work to identify those responsible, leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of justice.”
He did not offer specifics on whether or not the recommendations from the ۲۰۲۳ city report have been implemented within the department.
California highway patrol said it is still actively investigating Tioni Theus’s murder.
‘We can’t be silent any more’
While Tioni’s family awaits answers from law enforcement, they say members of the South Los Angeles community, too, have a role in preventing violence against Black women and girls, whether it’s reporting underage girls on sex-trafficking corridors to police or supportive services, calling out predators who are grooming teens online, or sharing information that can lead to an arrest.
“I feel like as a community we can’t be silent any more,” Kincy said. “We can’t wait for politicians, lawmakers or even the police. We have to stand up and make people accountable.”
Michael Dolphin, Tioni’s great-uncle, agreed. “This is not a white folks problem, it’s not an LAPD problem, it’s not a Mayor [Karen] Bass problem. It’s a community problem, because someone knows what happened,” he said.
He wants the city to pour resources into programs that can rehabilitate young people who have been repeatedly arrested or are currently incarcerated. These investments, he hopes, can stop teen boys from becoming violent.
“We need to figure out ways to catch these kids earlier,” he said. “We need to figure out how to get involved sooner and provide alternatives to hanging out on the street.”
Dolphin remembers his niece as a smart, loving teenager. He saw her often in the mornings, on her way to school, when she would come by to visit her great-grandmother, whom Dolphin was caring for. They would share breakfast and go over her homework together. “She liked her schoolwork,” he said. “And big mama’s house was a quiet, peaceful refuge for her.”
Kincy says she hopes that the story of her bubbly, sometimes clumsy teen cousin who walked on her tiptoes can lead to greater awareness around the increased risk of violence and exploitation Black teen girls and young women face and shed light on stories that received less news coverage than Tioni’s.
“When Tioni’s story hit, it resonated with people because it happened to their kid as well and they didn’t get the exposure,” Kincy said. “We can bring light to these stories through her.”
