Answers, Now! Black Orlando Woman Found Hanging From Tree Ruled ‘Suicide’, Family And Community Demand Investigation

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Finding a Black person hanged from a tree should never sit right in anyone’s spirit.

Yolna Lubrin’s family and the Orlando community are demanding answers after she was found dead last Thursday, September 28, with a rope around her neck in the backyard of a house where she did not live. We’re not forensic pathologists, but this doesn’t strike us as the type of incident that can so quickly be ruled a suicide. However, according to the Orlando Sentinel, authorities quickly ruled that the 31-year-old’s death was an act of self-harm but Yolna’s family ain’t trying to hear all that…

“My sister is an African-American woman. Why is she getting swept under the rug?” Naomi Lubrin, her sister, asked at the rally. “She was brilliant, she was amazing, she was laughter, but most of all she was loud.”

The Sentinel reports that over 60 people, including Pastor Carl Soto, pulled up to the Orlando City Hall earlier this week to call out the Chief of Police and to demand answers.

“Today we are calling out Chief Eric Smith, and we are urging him to have his department immediately rescind this allegation of suicide and thoroughly investigate all aspects of Mrs. Lubrin’s death,” Soto said.

In response to the public anger over their investigative process, the Orlando Police Department released the following statement:

“Although her cause of death is still being investigated and will ultimately be decided by the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office, the deceased individual’s documented history of mental illness, witness statements, cellular communications from Ms. Lubrin, and the physical evidence observed during the autopsy all point to suicide,” OPD said Tuesday in an email to media outlets.

If you know like we know, this case could very easily get pushed to the bottom of the pile and the police will just about their lives as if nothing happened. Hopefully, the family, the Orlando community, and media outlets will continue to apply pressure so that both transparency and justice can prevail.