Alabama Governor Consoles Family Of Murdered 8 Year Old Girl

Hiawayi Robinson, of Pritchard, Alabama, a small city on the north side of Mobile, was look­ing for­ward to turn­ing nine years old next week. On Tuesday, Hiawayi had talked to her father on the phone about what she want­ed for her birth­day (a lap­top com­put­er) and told him that she was going down­stairs to see if her cousin was home. She nev­er came back.

Her par­ents report­ed her miss­ing that evening. Her grand­moth­er, Brenda Populus, was heartbroken.

“I’ll do any­thing to get my grand­ba­by back,” she said. “Her birth­day was on the 24^th, in one week.” Populus couldn’t believe that Hiawayi could dis­ap­pear so sud­den­ly. “She went right down the steps — she didn’t have to cross the street or any­thing, just a lit­tle courtyard.”

Thursday, after a search coör­di­nat­ed by local police and the FBI, as well as vol­un­teers from the com­mu­ni­ty, Hiawayi’s body was found behind an aban­doned build­ing. Police are inves­ti­gat­ing her death as a homi­cide, in con­junc­tion with the FBI; no cause of death or pos­si­ble sus­pects have been announced.

When reporters asked Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley to com­ment on the news that Hiawayi’s body had been found, these were the words of com­fort and sup­port he had for Hiawayi’s family:

“There are things that hap­pen we just don’t under­stand. There are dif­fi­cul­ties in fam­i­lies. We don’t know, maybe drug relat­ed. Maybe alco­hol relat­ed. Maybe fam­i­ly prob­lems. We just don’t know what the sit­u­a­tion is.”

Bentley added he needs to do every­thing he can to make fam­i­lies more sound.

Gov. Bentley has not yet replied to press queries about his com­ments Thursday, but on Friday, he abrupt­ly offered a $5000 reward for infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest and con­vic­tion of a sus­pect and has issued a writ­ten state­ment say­ing some­thing rather dif­fer­ent from his ear­li­er com­ments about the sad fam­i­ly with its pos­si­ble drug and alco­hol problems:

“Dianne and I were heart­bro­ken to learn of the trag­ic death of this inno­cent child. We have been pray­ing and fol­low­ing the sit­u­a­tion close­ly, and our prayers for com­fort are with Hiawayi’s family.

“We won’t rest until this lit­tle girl’s killer is brought to jus­tice. Alabama’s state law enforce­ment agen­cies have been active­ly assist­ing the Prichard Police Department in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Hiawayi Robinson. I direct­ed the Secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, Spencer Collier, to go to Prichard and offer any resources need­ed. As soon as Hiawayi was report­ed miss­ing, we sent 10 State Bureau of Investigation agents to Prichard, and our Trooper Aviation Unit also assist­ed in help­ing to find Hiawayi. Those agents will remain in Prichard until a sus­pect has been arrest­ed. Furthermore, I’ve direct­ed an increased pres­ence of state troop­ers in Prichard until the per­son who com­mit­ted this ter­ri­ble act has been found.”

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