The bodies of a missing protester and an AARP volunteer were found over the weekend in Tallahassee, Florida, authorities said Monday.
A suspect in their disappearances, Aaron Glee Jr., 49, was taken into custody, Tallahassee police said. It wasn’t immediately clear what charges Glee would face.
The department identified the women as Oluwatoyin Salau, 19, and Victoria Sims, 75. Their bodies were found during an investigation Saturday a few miles southeast of downtown Tallahassee, police said.
Additional details about their disappearances or their possible connection weren’t immediately available.
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Salau, who went by “Toyin,” was last seen June 6, authorities said. On the same day, Salau tweeted that she had been molested by a man who offered to help collect her belongings from a church where she had been staying.
Salau said in the thread that she had contacted the police about the incident. NBC News hasn’t independently verified her account.
Salau was recorded on video in an earlier protest over the killing of Tony McDade, a black transgender man who was shot to death in Tallahassee on May 27.
McDade, 38, was a suspect in a reported stabbing. While searching for McDade, an officer opened fire on him after he “made a move consistent” with using a gun, police said.
“We’re doing this for him,” Salau said. “We’re doing this for our brothers and our sisters who got shot. But we’re doing this for every black person, because at the end of the day, I cannot take my f*** skin color off.”
Sims, who was reported missing Saturday, was a retired state worker who volunteered for the AARP and worked in local Democratic politics, The Associated Press reported.
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The group’s state director, Leslie Spencer, described her to the Tallahassee Democrat as “one of the most kind and gentlest souls I knew.”
“She always had a wise and thoughtful word to add to the conversation but she wasn’t afraid to ask hard questions of lawmakers,” she told the newspaper.
A friend of Salau’s described her to NBC News as “a beautiful soul” who “cared about everyone but herself her whole life” and dreamed of becoming a designer, artist and photographer.
“She loved art, she was art, she is art,” the friend said. “I love you Toyin.”
