Angelia Mangum

Angelia Mangum, a 19-year-old Black woman, and her friend Tjhisha Ball, 18, were two friends from Tampa, Florida. According to Tjhisha’s mother, her daughter had traveled to Jacksonville to work as an exotic dancer, a profession family said Angelia also pursued. While in Jacksonville, Tjhisha would stay with Angelia. Her mother described her daughter as a "good girl" who would never get into a car with a stranger. Records showed Angelia had outstanding warrants for burglary charges in Tampa, and Tjhisha had a prior arrest for driving without a valid license.

In the early morning hours of September 18, 2014, the two friends were found dead. At approximately 1:53 a.m., two motorists driving along the 9800 block of Sisson Drive on Jacksonville’s Northside spotted what they thought was a body. They turned their car around to get a closer look, and after confirming their fears, they called 911. The bodies of Angelia and Tjhisha were discovered on the side of the road, naked and bound with zip ties. One witness told a news outlet the women appeared to have been "hog-tied together," while another witness, Jason Brown, said it "looked like they were tossed from the overpass."

Jacksonville police immediately suspected foul play. Sgt. T.K. Waters told reporters that the bodies were left in an area where they would have been noticed, suggesting they had been placed there recently. Homicide detectives began processing the scene for evidence while the medical examiner’s office was called to take custody of the victims and perform autopsies. Authorities did not immediately release a cause of death for either woman.

As the investigation began, a possible motive emerged from Tjhisha’s family. Her sister told a local news station that she had seen social media messages suggesting the two women were killed in retaliation for setting up a man named Ja'tarvis "Tarzan" Johnson. Johnson, 22, had been shot and killed five days earlier, on September 13, when he went to a house on Hare Avenue. A man with him was also shot but survived. Days later, a fire was set at the home in a suspected arson. Tjhisha's sister also said she saw messages from her sister's Facebook account that showed she had been fearing for her life.

Despite a community vigil and pleas for information, no arrests were ever announced in the deaths of Angelia Mangum and Tjhisha Ball, nor in the connected homicide of Ja'tarvis Johnson. As of September 2014, no suspects had been publicly identified, and the case remains unsolved.