When Maia Yang’s niece Amarie Alowonle was shot at Sanborn Park in Robbinsdale in May 2025, the family was thrust into a grief they had never prepared for. Amarie was 19 years old. She died a week later from her injuries. Nearly a year later, no one has been arrested.
In the aftermath, Yang did what many families in crisis do, she searched. She Googled resources, advocates, anyone who could help her sister Tatiana Kilgore navigate the impossible weight of losing a child to violence. That search led her to the Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls.
“I reached out to them,” Yang said. “Amarie, she was Black, Native, I was like, wow, this would be perfect for them to step in and know about her story.”
The office, established by the Minnesota Legislature, is one of the few of its kind in the country. Led by Director Kaleena Burkes and a six-person team, it was created to address a crisis that has long existed in the shadows: the disproportionate rates at which Black women and girls go missing, are harmed and are killed, and the systemic failures that have allowed those cases to go unresolved and underreported…