Two Florida Teens Found Dead, Naked, Hog-Tied On Side Of Road
Two teenaged young women were found dead, Thursday, September 18. They had been tossed on the side of a road in Jacksonville, Florida, where they were discovered naked and hog-tied together in a pool of blood. Authorities quickly suspected foul play, and investigations continue but no arrests have been made.
The bodies were first spotted by two men driving early in the morning.
“At first I thought it was [a dead body],” Jason Brown told WFOX-TV. “And then I did a U-turn to see if it was a dead animal. That’s when we saw that it was one laying on top of another that looked like they were tossed from the overpass.”
“Blood splatter, they were naked, bound,” Alton Soles said. “They had like zip ties around their hands and their feet.”
According to News4Jax, the two men called 911 just before 2 a.m. The bodies, found dead, naked, hog-tied, and bound together were identified by police as Angelia Mangum, 19, and Tjhisha Ball, 18.
Not much has come from police investigations so far. No arrests have been made, and no information about the cause of their deaths has been released.
Tjhisha’s sister Crystal Moore has been searching for answers since learning about her sister being found dead on the side of a road. Facebook messages in Ball’s account have led her to a theory. Crystal Moore suspects their deaths could be connected to the September 16 death of 22-year-old Jatarvis “Tarzan” Johnson.
“Somebody named ‘Tarzan’ Johnson — he was the one who was killed in (Jacksonville) — it was supposed to be a set-up,” Moore said. “Tjhisha and Angie set this guy up, and they killed him, and the house was burnt down, but I don’t see any articles about it.”
News4Jax briefly covered Johnson’s death by gunfire, although not the subsequent arson.
“You don’t do tit for tat,” Moore said. “They were still too young ladies to die and that’s somebody’s child as well.”
Other information has come in through social media as well that conflicts with the retaliation theory. Crystal sounded less sure when she spoke with WFLA recently.
“Different people saying different things,” she said.
Whatever the cause, two young women were hog-tied, murdered, and dumped onto the side of a road from an overpass. A crowd-funding campaign has been created on YouCaring.com to help pay for funeral costs, estimated at $17,000. The organizers are working with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department and Coney Funeral Home to help the families of Mangum and Ball.
“Since the discovery of their bodies on September 18th, the media has done little to no coverage of their horrific murders and have done everything they can to tarnish the images of the these two women, the victims of a terrible crime,” reads the campaign description, written by Everyday Whorephobia, an activist group for sex workers.
Mangum and Ball worked as exotic dancers, which has led to what Salon and Ebony have described as victim blaming. Otherwise, they argue, national media would typically cover a story where the bodies of two young women are found gruesomely hog-tied and thrown from an overpass. These days, Jacksonville is mostly making headlines for the trial of Michael Dunn, who allegedly shot and killed someone at a gas station for playing loud rap music.
[Image: WPTV]
