Hello listeners, I'm your host Amara and this is Black Girl Gone, a true crime podcast.

On this episode of Black Girl Gone, we tell the story of Ashanti Miller, a 19 year old woman who was kidnapped on September 18th, 2017, and Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Ashanti worked at a sandwich shop on a naval base. The date as she was last seen, Ashanti was scheduled to be at work.

Surreillance video showed her car arriving on the base, but Ashanti never made it to work.

Five days after she vanished, her car was found, but there was no sign of Ashanti.

Six days after that, Ashanti's body was found in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She had been murdered, and her body had been left in a wooded area behind a church.

The man who allegedly murdered Ashanti is a retired Navy veteran who had been harassing Ashanti for weeks before he kidnapped her.

Ashanti's death shattered her family, but they used their strength to help other families of missing people.

And a year after her murder, the Ashanti alert became law.

This is Ashanti's story.

How many of you have heard of the Ashanti alert?

If you haven't, don't worry, you're not alone. Most people are not familiar with the law that was passed in 2018, and named after the victim in this week's story.

When Ashanti went missing in 2017, there was no national alert system like the Amber alert for adults under 65 or older teenagers like Ashanti.

The Ashanti national alert system was to be the Amber alert for adults.

However, even though it was passed in 2018, it would be years before it actually had the funding that it needed to operate.

The first time that I saw it being used was just this past week when a woman named Shinita Yor Lewis went missing in Newport News, Virginia.

Virginia state police issued an Ashanti alert for Shinita, who they said was an extreme danger.

Sadly, Shinita's husband was charged with her murder a few days after he was issued.

And although Shinita's story ended in tragedy, I was happy to see that the alert was being used.

And I hope that more states will implement these alerts soon, especially when young black women go missing.

This alert can be an extremely valuable tool that can help save lives and help us find missing adults sooner.

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