The body of a woman who went missing more than two weeks ago was recovered from the Mississippi River.
Authorities were able to locate 21-year-old Tamia Taylor on Saturday, Sept. 23, Fox 13 Memphis reported. She mysteriously disappeared after celebrating her birthday on a Memphis riverboat cruise in Memphis, Tennessee, with her friends.
When they docked after 1 a.m., her friends couldn’t find her, according to WREG. Her family reported her missing on Sept. 10, and her mother, Debra, told law enforcement that she’d last heard from her via text message about two hours before. She wondered why her daughter’s friends didn’t wait for her.
“The only thing they told me was she went upstairs on the second floor to use the bathroom. ‘She put her phone down on the table, we picked her phone up, we went and waited by the door for her to come out, and then we left.’ Why would you leave? That makes no sense. Y’all came together, y’all stick together,” Debra told the news station.
According to the report, Memphis Riverboats said that Taylor returned to the dock that night. There were security cameras on the boat, but in a Sept. 11 statement, the company said videos posted on social media show “she was last seen on the boat as the boat was pulling into the harbor.”
“It would mean the world, even if we don’t get anything but closure as to what happened. That would mean the world to me, her family,” Debra said last week, per WREG.
It was determined that Taylor’s cause of death was drowning, her family told Fox 13 Memphis, but additional details were labeled as “undetermined.” Authorities believe there was no foul play involved.
“She’s [Taylor’s mother] devastated. You have that type of hope that it’s not your loved one and you get the answer, and it’s a different type of feeling,” Jasmine Ellis of Dock Ellis Foundation said, the outlet reported. “So right now, she’s overwhelmed and naturally [has] the feelings a mother would feel if they lose their daughter.”
