In order to commemorate one week after Eliza Fletcher was abducted and killed while out for a morning run, more than 1,400 people have registered to run through the streets of Memphis at 4 a.m. on Friday.
A 34-year-old kindergarten teacher named Fletcher was taken at 4:30 in the morning while running through Memphis and thrown into an SUV. On Monday, her body was discovered in the city, dumped in some tall grass close to an abandoned home.
Having been charged with her kidnapping and murder, 38-year-old career criminal Cleotha Abston, who previously served 22 years in prison for kidnapping a lawyer, appeared in court on Wednesday.
In a video tribute to Fletcher and her legacy, her family released it on Wednesday. It features the adored kindergarten teacher speaking to her students.
She sings “This Little Light of Mine” to her students and talks about her dog in the video, which was captured during the pandemic.
A run will be held to commemorate one week since her disappearance, according to a group of Memphis women.
The 8.2-mile run, according to the organisers, is along a route she frequently ran. “We created this run as a way to honour Liza and cope with our own feelings,” they wrote on Facebook.
“Our mission is to advocate for women in the Mid South and highlight the fact that women should be able to run safely at any time of day.”
A mother and avid runner named Danielle Heineman, one of the organisers, said she was shaken by the killing of Fletcher and enraged by some of the responses.
Heineman stated, “I believe it’s crucial that we speak out and that the women in this community speak out for themselves.”
“We all just feel like we can’t run alone, but that shouldn’t be the case,” the speaker said.
She claimed that some of the responses upset her.
Why doesn’t she use a treadmill to exercise? After work, why isn’t she running? Women cannot perform that, she said.
We have jobs, families, and other responsibilities in addition to our obligations. We also have a right to be runners, however.
According to Heineman, the gathering started off as just a few friends but has now grown significantly.
My plan was for a handful of us to go out and sort of stand up for that right by declaring, “You know what, I’m jogging at four in the morning, and nobody is going to stop us from doing that,” she told Fox News.
“This simply proves that we have a really strong running community here in Memphis.”
Heineman and the crew make it clear that the event is not sponsored or organised by her family, and they implore attendees to respect this by refraining from speaking to the media.
They are urged to wear bold colours and refrain from bringing dogs or strollers in order to not bother the locals.
Cleotha Abston, the man suspected of murdering Fletcher, made an appearance in court in Memphis, Tennessee on Wednesday. He was accused of first-degree murder, abduction, and tampering with evidence.
He was denied bail by the court.
The death sentence is an option if he is found guilty in Tennessee, and the prosecution stated they were not ruling it out.
During the brief hearing, Abston talked exclusively to his public defender while wearing a green prison uniform and a mask.
Judge postponed the hearing until Thursday because prosecutors would not say if he will face further charges.
District Attorney for Shelby County Steve Mulroy verified that Fletcher had never encountered her assailant previously and that the crime was “isolated.”
Mulroy said, “It’s easy to speak about things in 2020 perspective. Abston should have been freed early after serving 22 years in jail for kidnapping a lawyer.
He certainly shouldn’t have been on the street in this specific circumstance. In retrospect, the parole decision was unfortunate, even if our office had opposed it at the time.
“Repeat violent criminals ought to be dealt with extremely harshly,” the saying goes.
The DA declined to respond when asked by DailyMail.com whether Fletcher had been sexually assaulted.
He was previously found guilty of raping a man when he was a teenager, according to court records.
When Abston, 38, was first charged with theft of goods worth $500 or less in Shelby County Juvenile Court in Memphis, Tennessee, he was only 11 years old.
From October 1995 to May 2000, he was jailed 16 times for rape, violent violence, and illegal possession of a firearm.
His initial accusations were brought against him in June 1995, according to Action News 5, and he was a member of the “Lemoyne Gardens Gangstas” group.
According to records, Abston was sent to the care of Shelby County’s Youth Services Bureau after being charged with raping a man.
He was moved to adult court for kidnapping attorney Kemper Durand two weeks after he was freed from his final stint at the SCYSB and placed in his mother’s custody.
“I’m not going to delve into the juvenile court record for obvious reasons,” DA Mulroy continued. We may check the adult court file, which reveals a kidnapping conviction.
“We shall learn more about his record in court when it is appropriate,” the judge said.
For the crime, Abston received a 22-year prison term; he was released in 2020.
On Friday morning about 8 a.m., a new video captures the suspect driving to his brother Mario’s residence at the Longview Gardens community.
Abston allegedly kidnapped the heiress less than four hours earlier, seven miles away, close to the University of Memphis.
Unreleased surveillance video that the police got depicts a man ‘aggressively’ running toward Fletcher and shoving her into the passenger side of the car.
Following their scuffle, the automobile sat in the parking lot with Fletcher inside for four minutes before driving off to an unidentified place.
After discovering his DNA on Champion sliders that were abandoned after the altercation with Fletcher, as well as on her water bottle and cell phone, police were able to locate him.
He can be seen arriving at the complex and sitting in his car before getting up and walking to the trunk on the video. It’s not evident what he took out of the trunk.
Abston spends more than an hour on the passenger side of the GMC Terrain after searching through the car’s trunk and running inside his brother’s house.
He was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, having a firearm while committing a violent felony, and possessing controlled narcotics after officers discovered a semi-automatic handgun, a scale, and a bag of heroin and fentanyl.
Abston reported to the police that his brother had been washing his clothing in the home’s sink as well as cleaning the inside of his GMC Terrain with a floor cleaner.
The father of Abston, Cleo Henderson, will be released from prison in 2044 after being convicted of second-degree murder.
Police discovered that Abston’s phone pinged close to the scene of Fletcher’s abduction, and another neighbour corroborated that he was acting “extremely odd.”
Over the weekend, police hauled a dumpster from a low-income apartment building adjacent to Abston’s brothers.
In close proximity to where her Lululemon running shorts were discovered in a garbage bag, they located the missing mother of two in some tall grass.