Gabby Petito vs. Jelani Day: Why Were Their Cases Treated Differently?

Commentary by Amani Parker. Photos by ABC Action News and WGLT.                

Racial discrimination has been and always will be a thing in America—whether it's because of police brutality or when a person goes missing.

For example, influencer Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito was an American woman who disappeared between August 27 and 30, 2021, while she was on a vanlife trip across the United States with her fiance, Brian Christopher Laundrie. Her case received widespread media attention. As authorities launched a thorough search to locate Petito, news outlets floated numerous theories. Coverage around her disappearance caught the attention of Americans, and many rallied around her family and hoped for her safe return home. Articles constantly ran about the search for Petitio, and detailed timelines were even created to track the case. Gabby Petito was unfortunately found dead. Gabby's body was found in Grand Teton, Wyoming and her death was ruled a homicide although the cause of death has yet to be determined. Her fiance Brian Laundrie was named a person of interest and the authorities are now searching for him.  Even though the investigation and concern for Gabby Petitio was and still is justified, many people were asking why other missing person cases weren't receiving the same media coverage. I think the Gabby Petito case got so much attention because of “Missing White Woman Syndrome” and just the overall fact that she was a young white woman. 

Jelani Day was a 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student reported missing by his family on August 25, 2021. His family filed a missing person’s report after not being able to contact him for two days. After Jelani was reported missing, Bloomington police located video surveillance of him entering a retail store on August 24, and found Jelani’s car in a heavily wooded area at the Illinois Valley YMCA on August 26. The same clothes he was last seen wearing were still inside the vehicle. A little over one week later, police, fire, and rescue officials found “an unidentified body just off the south bank of the Illinois River''. In a statement released the following day, Bloomington police said that the coroner’s office has begun an investigation on the body and that the identification can take a while—which it did. After the body was discovered the activity around the case stopped. Jelani’s mother found out that the coroner didn’t have the chemical needed to process a DNA sample. Jelani’s family was disappointed because the police had only assigned one detective to the whole case. Jelani Day’s family and members of the Black Community had demanded more media because they never got the media coverage that they deserved. As of October 15, 2021, the cause of death for Jelani Day is still unknown.  

If the media and police keep neglecting the Black Community, they’re putting more Black lives in danger.

Amani Parker is a junior at Friendship Collegiate Academy.