oA Texas mother is searching for answers to what led to the mysterious death of her 20-year-daughter.
Jalanda Kemp said she last saw her daughter alive in July 2022, after she left for a road trip with a group of friends.
Zkira Kemp was a student at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas, and was home for the summer. She left Killeen with two friends, Michael Dukes and Rhonda Ellis Tinsley, on July 3 for a trip to Hanover, Maryland.
Kemp said that her daughter made it to Hanover safely on July 4. According to the mother, the trio was staying there with a friend named Aydon Fair.
Zkira had shared her location with her mother on her cellphone, as her mother had requested, but four days later, the GPS tracking and communication between the two were cut.
Kemp told The North Carolina Beat she last tracked her daughter to a bowling alley in Maryland around 10:30 p.m. on July 7. However, she checked her phone when leaving work at 1 a.m., and Zkira’s location was turned off.
Later that morning, Kemp received a call from her friend Lakisha Coles, who told her Fair’s mother was trying to contact her. Coles reportedly told her that something had happened. The two women got on a conference call with Dukes’ mother, who started crying, according to reports.
“She was sobbing, she wouldn’t say it. I finally screamed, “is my baby dead,” KCEN-TV reported.
The Charles County Sheriff’s Office said Zkira died in a car crash. Her friends said she was driving drunk when she crashed the vehicle into a tree. Everyone else in the car survived. They were able to get out of the car before it went up in flames, reports show. Just one of the two other occupants of the vehicle sustained serious injuries.
“My daughter’s body was so burned up it was completely unrecognizable,” Kemp said.
Kemp reportedly was told by Dukes’ mom that he suffered a broken hip, leg, fractured skull, two collapsed lungs, and that he had to undergo open heart surgery. She questioned those injuries, as she’d been told that Dukes helped his girlfriend, Rhonda Ellis Tinsley, get out of the car in the middle of the woods, but he could not save Zkira.
Kemp said the details sounded odd, and they got murkier once she saw the autopsy report. It reportedly shows Zkira was in the back seat of the car at the time of the crash, with no alcohol in her system.
On July 15, the mother traveled to Maryland to get clarity. While there, Kemp said she was denied access to her daughter’s body, and the medical examiner’s office forced her to agree to cremate the body before it was released to a funeral home. However, she was able to see a photo of her daughter’s charred body.
“My daughter’s body was so burned up it was completely unrecognizable,” Kemp said.
While in Maryland, she also visited the accident site, which turned out to be in the middle of a residential area instead of the woods like Dukes reportedly had said.
Kemp does not believe that her daughter died in the crash. She points to unconfirmed dental records and the conflicting autopsy report.
“Another thing, the autopsy reported that the body they found inside of the car after the crash was 88 pounds and 3 feet, 3 inches tall. But my daughter was 169 pounds and 5-feet 4-inches tall. It’s not making sense,” Kemp said.
According to a post-mortem examination report posted by The North Carolina Beat, both of the 20-year-old’s forearms and lower legs were amputated. However, Kemp claims that the legs were attached to the body in the photo she saw.
“I don’t feel like she’s gone. I don’t know if I’m holding on to hope, but I don’t feel it. I never felt it, but I thought I was crazy,” Kemp said. “I thought I just didn’t want to let go. But the more I’m seeing all of these different reports and more of these people come out with information, it is not adding up.”
