This month, the “body found in the Illinois River near Peru, which is far southwest of Chicago, was sadly identified as” that of Jelani Day, a graduate student at Illinois State University.
In LaSalle County on September 4, a body was found “”floating near the south bank of the Illinois River about 14 miles east of the Illinois Rt. 251 Bridge”.” After Day, 25, went missing in late August, her body was found and recognized.
According to the doctor, the cause of death wasn’t known at the time of the report and wouldn’t be known until more tests and lab results came back.
“Our hearts are broken,” Day’s family wrote in a letter. During this terrible time, please pray for our family.
Today is #WhatHappenedToJelaniDay, and after 30 days of hard work, we need to find out what happened to Jelani.
We’ll talk about the open questions about Jelani’s death and disappearance.
We will not stop until Jelani’s fate is known.
After several weeks, Day’s body was found next to his car. Officials say it could take weeks or months to figure out who the remains belong to because of how they were found.
In a recent interview with NBC Chicago, Day’s mother said, “We gave them DNA so they can identify the body.” “But what I was told is that the crime lab doesn’t have the tool they need to process the DNA.”
The office of the LaSalle County coroner said the body was that of a man.
While the office said the death investigation was “separate” from the investigation into Day’s kidnapping, they did not say what that meant.
Day went away on August 24. Two days after he went missing, his car was found in the woods near his body, many miles away.
That August 25, his family and a teacher told the police that he wasn’t at school for days.
Surveillance video shows that Day went to a pharmacy in Bloomington the day before.
After two days, cops in Peru, Illinois, found his car in the woods 60 miles away. Police found his clothes in his white Chrysler 300, which had been watched on video.
The Bolden family Mother Day said it was strange that her son had gone missing.
The boss told him, “I need him to come home so he can keep going on his way to becoming Dr. Jelani Day.”
Police said Day went missing in “suspicious and unexplained” ways.
She doesn’t believe her kid ran away and thinks he got hurt.
The short answer is no, he wasn’t sad. “He wasn’t under any stress that would make him want to run away from life,” she stated. “That’s why I think someone was involved.”
The Day family is unhappy with the investigation into their son’s absence. They say that the young Black man has not gotten as much attention as other missing people, like Gabby Petito, whose disappearance and death led to a huge search that involved many states.
Monday, police asked the public for help in finding out what happened to Day. After almost a month, the search for the lost boy began again.