Suicide is a major theme of this story. If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, help is available. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or visit 988lifeline.org for confidential support.

_

In early May, a man walking his dog through his north Charlotte neighborhood spotted what appeared to be someone standing still by a tree in a shady churchyard.

His dog tugged him closer. As he approached, he realized to his horror the figure was a lifeless Black girl, held up by a ratchet strap around her neck. Her feet, in slip-on sandals, rested on the ground near a blue toddler-size chair.

The ratchet strap — typically used for securing truck cargo — was wrapped around a leaning tree trunk at least twice the girl’s height.

This was on a Friday afternoon. By Monday, the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police closed the case four days later.

The girl was 16-year-old Juliana Umba Nzita, who had been missing for several days.

Juliana was active in her church and her family lived in a two-story house in a Charlotte cul-de-sac about a 20-minute walk from where she was found. Her family, who emigrated from the Congo, described her smile as warm, her demeanor as gentle. She also struggled with her mental health and severe bullying at school, an uncle said.

Some of Juliana’s family questioned the conclusion that she died by suicide. So have members of the predominantly Black church where her body was discovered May 8. And so have a growing number of people on social media, with commenters saying they didn’t believe the police, and some thinking she was lynched.

The Charlotte Observer investigated the circumstances around Juliana’s death and how CMPD handled her case. Police apparently never found her cell phone. No one from CMPD contacted the man who found Juliana’s body. Authorities did not do an autopsy, although police said a thorough inspection of the body was performed.

CMPD refused the Charlotte Observer’s request to interview the detectives on the case and had not made any public statements to address concerns circulating on social media. Several weeks ago, CMPD spokespeople Brian Gallagher and Erin Wiggins questioned why the Observer would write about a suicide, and Wiggins said they would not talk about it further.

On Wednesday, after The Observer presented to police what reporters had discovered, CMPD provided some answers. However, they refused to provide any documents associated with Juliana’s case beyond basic incident reports.

The Observer, like most news organizations, does not typically report on deaths by suicide. But this is a story about how Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police handled the hanging death of a Black girl in the South, a region where white people publicly lynched Black people with impunity a few generations ago.

‘Who would hang themselves on a church?’

The United House of Prayer for All People, where Juliana’s body was found, sits on about 21 acres along West Sugar Creek Road in north Charlotte.

On the south side of the property is a mansion owned by the church, its long driveway flanked by white stone lions. A grassy yard shaded by trees leads to the brick church where parishioners worship.

Kenneth Tolbert regularly walks Cosmo, his pit bull mix, through those trees. It was around noon on May 8 when Tolbert discovered Juliana’s body and immediately alerted church members who were in the nearby parking lot.

“I wanted to talk to you all about it first, this being y’all’s property and all,” Tolbert is heard saying on the video he recorded with his phone. One of the church men thought at first that Juliana’s body was a doll. When they realized it wasn’t, they said they’d call 911.

“Who would hang themselves on a church?” one asked.

Tolbert shared the video with the Observer. Some sort of pink fabric was knotted up around where the ratchet strap was strung from the tree. Juliana was wearing a dark jacket, black pants and sandals.

Tolbert provided his name and number to the church members to give to the police and left. The person who called 911 told the dispatcher that a young woman had hanged herself from a tree in the yard, according to a copy of the call obtained by The Observer under a public records request.

If CMPD had called, Tolbert would have told them he didn’t believe there was any way Juliana could have hanged herself. He doubted the small chair could have held her weight or that it was tall enough to lift her to that tree limb.

“I couldn’t even reach it myself,” Tolbert said, referring to the limb. He stands 5 foot 9 inches.

Tolbert now searches the internet for any updates on Juliana, frustrated that he finds only rumors.

“If this were a white girl who was found hanging at a Myers Park church, the police would have been all over this. It would have been national (news) in 72 hours,” he said. “We cannot let Juliana’s death be in vain. There has to be transparency and an investigation.”

Charlotte councilman demands more transparency from CMPD

CMPD should have been more transparent about the case regardless of whether it was a suicide, said Charlotte City Councilman JD Mazuera Arias. He spoke after learning about the incident Wednesday, July 22, from an Observer reporter.

“Our police department should have been more proactive, and it should have been more open and transparent with the situation at hand,” Mazuera Arias said. “This is unacceptable. This is so grotesque that we were not made aware as council.”

Charlotte City Councilwoman Kimberly Owens said police should have briefed council members about what happened when Juliana’s body was found.

“The death of a young woman of color, after having been missing for several days, found hanged in a tree of a church is something that merits a different approach,” Owens wrote in an email Wednesday, July 22, to city officials.

“Were we not in the South and were we not living in a very difficult time of social and political upheaval, I may land differently on the amount of deference we give to CMPD and the amount of information we share with all council members,” said Owens, who is a lawyer. “But, that is not the case...”

CMPD explains actions in Charlotte hanging death weeks later

When a Black man named Javion Magee was found hanging from a tree in Vance County in 2024, Sheriff Curtis Brame, who is Black, publicly spoke about the case. His office also released a five-page document describing the timeline leading up to Magee’s death about 180 miles northeast of Charlotte.

It took eight months for authorities to call the death a suicide. For Juliana, it took three days.

And unlike in Magee’s case, CMPD offered nothing in the way of public explanation about why they concluded Juliana hanged herself until The Observer started asking questions.

In an email to The Observer on Wednesday, CMPD said: “We fully recognize the important role the media plays in informing the public and we respect First Amendment rights. Please know there was never an effort to stop the Charlotte Observer from writing this story.

“However, through our standard process, we typically do not release public details on suicide investigations, specifically to protect family privacy, uphold the victim’s dignity, and respect the sensitive nature of these cases. In every case, we strive to balance providing information while keeping those critical considerations in mind,” the statement said. “We would caution anyone against drawing definitive conclusions when full information isn’t available or supported by investigative facts.”

CMPD also said in the email that a thorough physical examination revealed no defensive wounds and no signs of physical or sexual assault, that there was no evidence indicating foul play, and that a tree limb had broken during the incident. The limb could have affected how Juliana’s body was positioned when she was found, according to police.

The church does appear to have cameras, but police said that no relevant footage was captured.

Police told the Observer that the medical examiner decides whether to perform an autopsy. The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office told the Observer that the decision to do autopsies depends on whether police or the medical examiner suspect foul play.

At the Observer’s request, Asha Layne, an associate professor at Morgan State University and former Baltimore Police crime scene investigator, reviewed the nearly two-minute-long footage that Tolbert took. She said pertinent information that’s unknown includes the height of the victim, the height of the chair and the distance from the ground to the branch.

Layne asked if police checked Juliana’s blood for alcohol or drugs, if they analyzed the rope and if they looked for anybody else’s DNA on the rope or her body.

Juliana’s family obtained their own autopsy

Juliana’s family is awaiting the results of their own, independent autopsy, which will include DNA analysis, according to Jill Collen Jefferson. She’s a civil rights attorney working with the family.

The family’s GoFundMe page, which has raised more than $10,000, says that Juliana struggled with her mental health. Her life “was shaped by struggles no child should ever have to endure,” the GoFundMe author, Bueia Umba, wrote. Umba is one of Juliana’s uncles.

Juliana attended North Academy of World Languages in north Charlotte before switching to virtual school, her obituary said.

“Juliana’s story is not just about loss — it is about the silent pain so many people carry after bullying, trauma, and emotional suffering,” Umba wrote. “No one should feel alone, forgotten, or overwhelmed by their struggles. Juliana mattered, and her life mattered.”

However, when Juliana was reported missing from her home, the caller told dispatcher that she had no mental health or disability concerns.

Nzita’s family did not attend or have any connection to the church where she was found.

Juliana’s uncle, Mathy Nzita, doubted his niece hanged herself. Logistically, it seemed too difficult for her, he said. He said he felt that the police didn’t truly investigate, questioning why authorities wouldn’t do an autopsy upon finding a teenage girl hanging in public.

“This is the U.S. This is not a third-world country,” he told The Observer.

Nzita also found it troubling that police never found Juliana’s cell phone, and questioned why they withheld some of her clothes from the family in the weeks that followed their suicide determination.

That is “suspicious,” according to Natasha Pratt Harris, a criminologist and professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Harris, who has no connection to the case, said police do not need to keep evidence after determining a death by suicide.

“If it’s a murder, you need to keep that evidence so you can use that in court,” she said.

Experts say details surrounding Juliana’s death are unusual

Four criminal justice and mental health experts interviewed by the Observer said based on what they can tell, Juliana’s manner of death appeared unusual.

First, she’s a teenage girl. Hanging is the least common method that girls her age use to hurt themselves — especially in public, said Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State.

Part of being Black in America, unfortunately, is that you have to be suspicious of health, police departments, educational institutions and so forth in cases like these.

Raymond Winbush

Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University

Second, she’s Black. Black people rarely hang themselves in public, Winbush said, given the historical context.

And third, he noted that Juliana’s feet were touching the ground when Tolbert found her. Survival instinct would have kicked in, Winbush said, and likely would have stopped her from hanging herself. CMPD disputed that, saying that this is not ”supported by forensic science or investigative facts.”

“Part of being Black in America, unfortunately, is that you have to be suspicious of health, police departments, educational institutions and so forth in cases like these,” Winbush said.

Questioning how authorities handle suicide

Police and medical examiners nationwide often have dismissed hanging cases like this one as suicide, according to experts who spoke to the Observer.

Retired homicide and forensic consultant Vernon J. Geberth, formerly with the New York City Police, wrote in a 2013 report that investigators tend to assume they’re dealing with a suicide if the initial police report suggests that. He reviewed many suicide cases where investigators did not take enough photographs or do the right tests.

“Without a doubt investigators take ‘short cuts’ when they hear the word suicide,” he wrote.

Jefferson, the attorney working with Juliana’s family, has studied dozens of “modern-day lynchings” and suspicious deaths where racial or other identity-based motives may be at play. She found a pattern among nearly all of them: Police made premature conclusions that the deceased died by suicide; crime scenes were often compromised; and investigations appeared “shoddy.”

She published her findings in a recent report called “A Crimson Record,” a nod to trailblazing muckraker investigative journalist Ida B. Wells’ 1895 “Red Record,” which documented 241 lynchings in 1892, including five that year in North Carolina.

Jefferson could not comment on Juliana’s case because she’s helping the family investigate her death.

In general, however, she said that when law enforcement jumps to the conclusion that a person who was found hanged died by suicide, they not only disregard potential safety concerns for the community, but also perpetuate the norm for other officers to follow in future cases.

“What makes it worse is when you bring it to their attention,” Jefferson said, “and they refuse to do anything about it.”

Historical context adds weight to hanging deaths in the South

A few weeks before Juliana died, a Charlotte Remembrance Project installed a marker at Reedy Creek Park to memorialize Willie McDaniel, a Black man who was lynched near there in 1929. The project is part of a nationwide movement to understand how the history of racial terror shapes today.

The police have to realize the role that they played historically in these cases, where a lot of times they were complicit.

Jill Collen Jefferson

Civil rights attorney and founder of JULIAN

Between 1865 and 1950, nearly 6,500 Black men, women and children were lynched in the United States, according to the marker. White authorities “rarely conducted thorough investigations of racial terror lynchings,” the marker notes.

The marker has since been vandalized and was taken down to be restored, making the James Baldwin quote at the sign’s base all the more pertinent.

“Nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Across the nation, Black people were hanged for false allegations or disrupting white social customs. In 1892, west of Greenville, South Carolina, a man named Isaac Lincoln was killed for being “saucy to white people,” according to Wells in her report “The Red Record.”

That historical context is what appears to fuel much of the outrage about Juliana’s death on social media. And it’s what creates an imperative for police to fully investigate deaths like Juliana’s, and offer transparency to an understandably alarmed community, said Jefferson, the attorney working for Juliana’s family.

That’s regardless of any ultimate determination of how Juliana died.

“The police have to realize the role that they played historically in these cases, where a lot of times they were complicit,” Jefferson said. “To mitigate that mistrust they should be as up-front as they can about what they’re doing because if they don’t, we’re going to assume they’re covering something up.”

Jefferson said even when lynchings were once done in public, authorities would sometimes officially label them suicides.

Silence can be ‘louder than any voice’

On July 3, at least 200 people gathered at a church in east Charlotte for Juliana’s funeral.

“The silence left behind by someone we love can be louder than any voice,” Preacher Pedrito Mputo told the mourners.

After sermons and scripture reading, family and friends clad in colorful clothing danced down the aisle. They circled Juliana’s casket, repeating those moves for about an hour. They moved to the beat of a live band that only took a couple brief breaks. Sobbing crashed through moments of rare silence.

At the church where Juliana was found, another memorial remains.

Fabric roses stand at the base of the tree, and Juliana’s photo is pinned under a rock. Parishioners pray for the teen during services.

When Observer reporters stopped by the church recently, member Gloria Alexander had one question.

“Did they arrest anybody yet?”

_

NC Reality Check reflects the Charlotte Observer’s commitment to holding those in power to account, shining a light on public issues that affect our local readers and illuminating the stories that set the Charlotte area and North Carolina apart. Have a suggestion for a story? Email realitycheck@charlotteobserver.com

Reality Check

Georgia Power adds time, not transparency, to OpenAI data center contract after public pressure

Get unlimited digital access

#ReadLocal