Jahnay Bryan has not been seen since October.
The Cornell University grad previously spoke of being afraid of “going missing,” and now her sister is concerned something happened to her sibling.
Bryan, 23, was last seen near West 8th Street in Los Angeles around 9 a.m. on Oct. 16, the Los Angeles Police Department said in an Ebony Alert issued on Nov. 19.
“She had just graduated from Cornell and had all these ambitions, it is incredibly unlike her to just completely go off the grid,” Bryan’s sister Jahque Bryan-Gooden told News Nation in an interview published on Friday, Dec. 20.
In an interview with Dateline, Jahque added that “going missing” was Jahnay’s “biggest fear.”
“Like, being a Black girl and getting trafficked, or someone kidnapping her, or her going missing,” Jahque added of her sister. “She had vividly shared to a friend, like, ‘If something ever happens to me, find me.’ ”
On the day she went missing, Jahnay sent a strange email to her former boyfriend about wanting to get married, Jahque said.
“I think we should get married, and I think we should work in industry. I was just in contract with the Commissioner of the Department of Water Management in a city. It’s a brilliant idea,” the email read, per News Nation.
“It wasn’t even grammatically correct,” Jahque told Dateline of the correspondence. “And so that was definitely like, ‘Okay, what’s happening here?’ You know? But I don’t think that someone else would have had her email.”
Jahnay graduated from Cornell University before moving to her homestate Pennsylvania, where she lost touch with her loved ones. Jahque told Dateline she last spoke with her sister via email last year, an exchange she described as “positive.”
It’s unclear how she ended up in L.A. In August, she sent her former boyfriend an email telling him she was relocating.
“Gone for the last few months, back moving to a new city Monday. Bye,” she reportedly wrote.
Jahnay’s former boyfriend confirmed to Dateline that she sent him the emails in August and October.
Jahque added to News Nation that she’s “frustrated” with the investigation into her sister’s disappearance, claiming that at least nine people have told her they’ve seen Jahnay.
An LAPD spokesperson said there are no updates on the investigation, the Los Angeles Times reported this month. Bryan’s family is now working with volunteers from the Black and Missing Foundation, hoping that a community search event will help them find Jahque.
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Former Sen. Steven Bradford addressed the disparity among missing Black youth, who make up 40% of all cases, but are only 15% of the country’s youth population, per the L.A. Times. Her case was compared to Hannah Kobayashi, a White woman who was missing for a month before she was found safe in an investigation that garnered widespread media attention.
“When Black young women and children disappear, resources are not committed to find them,” said Bradford. “We need to ask ourselves, why is that?”
Jahque shared with Dateline that Jahnay is “brilliant,” “caring” and “a natural leader,” making her concerned that her sister could be in trouble.
“Not only was she loved, but she loved a lot of people, so — or does love people,” Jahque said. “So, to know that— know that people that care for her the most, she hasn’t been in contact with, it’s scary. And it’s not like her, right? It’s abnormal behavior.”
Police described Bryan as a Black female with black hair and brown eyes. She is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs about 125 pounds. It’s unknown what she was wearing the day she disappeared.
Anyone with information on Bryan’s whereabouts is urged to call the Missing Persons Unit, Detective Avalos at (213) 996-1800.
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