One was brutally murdered on an Athens trail. The other was mortally wounded on an Athens trail. That’s where the similarities between Laken Riley and Santonio Coleman end.
Amidst national media attention, a massive multi-agency manhunt took a suspect into custody just days after Riley, a white female college student, was found dead on the trails near UGA’s Lake Herrick. Meanwhile, because Coleman was a Black gay man or transgender woman, their death has not received nearly the same attention from the media or the police. (Coleman’s relatives used masculine language, but others said they identified as trans.)
“Many of us feel like, if this person was someone like Laken Riley—I’m just going to go ahead and say it—there would be donations coming in from the community, and everyone would know what was going on,” said Mokah Jasmine Johnson, cofounder of the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement…