Her best friend described Toyin as a Sad Girl With the Happiest Spirit.
Nigerian American, Tallahassee Born, Toyin Salu had a very hard life. She came from an abusive family, she’d been sexually assaulted several times and was a victim of sex trafficking. Toyin was taking refuge with local churches and friends during her last days. Anytime she and her friends reached out to the police and lawyers, it always fell on deaf ears.
In the midst of her extremely hard life, Toyin was an active participant and speaker at the Black Lives Matter protest in Tallahassee, Florida. You can see her video on Twitter protesting after transgender black man, Tony McDade was killed by police on May 27th. The video will knock your socks off. It’s hard to believe she was only 19 years old.
On June 6th, down on her luck again, Toyin accepted a ride back to church by a man dressed as a man of God. He offered her a place to sleep for the night, a shower and some clean clothes. Toyin accepted.
By the morning, she had been molested and escaped at 5:30 am in the man’s clothes. Toyin found the poise and composure to report all this over twitter. I have 5 of the tweets below. This is her Twitter account: @virgingrltoyin if you want to see all of them.
The tweets below were the last time anyone had seen or heard from Toyin again. On Saturday, June 13th, she was found murdered. The killer is in custody. It’s unclear if the murderer and molester are the same person. But, what is clear, is she had a life of hell and the system failed her. I’ll make some closing comments after the tweets.
Tweets below:
“Anyways I was molested in Tallahassee, Florida by a black man this morning at 5:30 on Richview and Park Ave. The man offered to give me a ride to find someplace to sleep and recollect my belongings from a church I refuged to a couple days back to escape unjust living conditions.”
“Going back to the situation that happened to me this morning, I did not fall asleep. He then asked me if I wanted a massage at this moment his roommate who was in the house was asleep. I was laying on my stomach trying to calm myself down from severe ptsd. He started touching-
“My back and rubbing my body using my body until he climaxed and then went to sleep. Before I realized what happened to me I looked over and his clothes were completely off. Once I saw he was asleep I escaped from the house and started walking from Richview Road to anywhere else.”
“All of my belongings my phone my clothes shoes are all assumably at the church where I’ve been trying to track since I sought spiritual guidance/ refuge. I will not be silent.”
“Literally wearing this man’s clothes right now DNA all over me because I couldn’t locate his house the moment I called the police because I couldn’t see.”
I’ll close with this, 19 year old Toyin Salau meant something to the world. She was important to a lot of people. Toyin was a bright light in a cold world. Let’s pay attention to other Toyin’s reaching out for help.
Say her name: “Toyin Salau.”