An African-American museum founder was found dead in a car trunk in Louisiana in what homicide investigators have described as a “heinous act.”
“Ms. Sadie was a tireless advocate of peace,” the Baton Rouge Police Department posted on its Facebook page before it added: “Our detectives are working diligently to bring the person or persons responsible for this heinous act to justice.”
Louisiana state Rep. C. Denise Marcelle asked for locals to contact the police if they know anything.
“My heart is empty ... as I learned last night that Ms. Sadie Roberts Joseph was found murdered!” Marcelle wrote on Facebook. “She never bothered anyone, just wanted to expand her African American Museum downtown, where she continually hosted the Juneteenth Celebration yearly. I loved working with her and am saddened by her death.... whoever knows what happened to her, please contact the authorities and say something.”
Beatrice Johnson, one of Roberts-Joseph’s 11 brothers and sisters, told AP that she lived two doors down from her sister’s home in Baton Rouge.
Johnson explained Roberts-Joseph would come by every day. Johnson said her sister came over Friday because “she had mixed some cornbread, but her oven went out, and she brought it here to put in the oven,” AP reported.
Pointing at her kitchen, Johnson said: “The bread is still there. She never came back to get it.”
“Following the lowest year for homicides in a decade, East Baton Rouge Parish rebounded in 2017 with a historic high of 106 killings, easily toppling the former record of 96 homicides in 2007,” said the report.
Facts About Crime in the US
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
