Family Of Missing Indigenous Woman Worried Police Aren't Doing Enough To Help

By Christianna Silva


According to her uncle, Aubrey Dameron was “just a big ball of life.”


“She absolutely loved music,” Christian Fencer, who was just six months older than his niece, told MTV News. “Her big dream was to someday become a singer. She would sit at the computer for hours listening to YouTube videos, and perform for the family member while we were attempting to watch TV.”


Nevertheless what made Aubrey so special was that she was optimistic in the face of injustice, Fencer and Pam Smith, her aunt, explain. Aubrey, a transgender woman who is a member of the Cherokee country, developed that excellent at an early age.


“Growing up, we were both ridiculed,” Fencer mentioned. “There were occasions where we were walking residence and we would either be chased residence or people would come by yelling homophobic slurs at us.” Aubrey’s transition in high school, he notes, “was something new for the community. People just acted like it was some order kind of plague. There were occasions where she was kicked out of church. I sort of knew right off the bat, this isn't something normal.”


Around 3:00 a.M. On March 9, 2019, Aubrey walked away from her mother’s residence in rural Grove, Oklahoma. The 25-year-old didn’t come back.


According to Captain Gayle Wells with the Delaware County Sheriff's Department, who acquired a search warrant for Aubrey’s Facebook page, she had sent countless Facebook messages asking someone to pick her up from her mom’s residence, however no one responded. Her GPS reportedly last “pinged” at 3:42 a.M. On March 9, about 100 yards from her mother’s residence. Two days later, on March 11, her mother announced her missing.


the initial search party was organized two weeks later, on March 23. It isn’t necessarily odd for law enforcement to take that long to search for a missing person; once law enforcement receives a report that someone is missing, they evaluate whether the case even requires a missing person and then they determine how they'll supply resources on a case-by-case basis, Dr. Michelle Jeanis, a criminology professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, told ABC News.


On that first search, Smith mentioned, companions, family member, “complete strangers” and the Oklahoma City Metro Search and Rescue Team checked by means of the heavily-wooded area in back of Aubrey’s home and into the ponds in the surrounding area. The search and rescue team discovered a sock with possible blood on it. The Delaware County Sheriff’s Office sent it to the OSBI, and weeks later, they’re still waiting for results.


“Because of her high-risk lifestyle, there [are] some opportunities about what happened or where she is,” Wells mentioned, pointing to her gender identity as well as a history of substance use. “So, I mean, with [the] worst-case scenario in mind, they've searched some places.” He also claimed that law enforcement noticed text exchanges between Aubrey and “various men” that night; while Wells did not expand on what that meant, the family member mentioned she was just attempting to get someone to pick her up from her mother’s house.


Like several law enforcement terms, the definition for a “at-risk” case varies from division to division. Some of the reasons law enforcement classify a case as “at-risk” is if the missing person is a victim of a crime or foul play, in need of medical attention, has no pattern of running away, is mentally incapacitated, among a number of other reasons, according to ABC News.


Any time MTV News asked how the sheriff treats a “at-risk” case differently from an average case, he said: “I think I mentioned she was a high-risk individual because of her lifestyle.” It isn't clear what would differentiate a case from being “high-risk” over “at-risk.”


According to Fencer, the office’s classification of Aubrey based on her identity and personalized choices felt like they didn’t think his niece was worth looking for. He also fears that, as a Indigenous, transgender woman, Aubrey is more likely to be a victim of violence. This fear has some basis in truth: Transgender ladies are almost twice as likely to experience physical violence, sexual violence, and hate violence in public places than their cisgendered peers, according to Amnesty International. And according to Indian Nation Today, Native American ladies are 10 times more likely to be murdered than non-Native women.


There’s one bill in Congress that could fight the prevalence of violence against indigenous women: Savanna’s Act, which was introduced by North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp and aims to clarify the jurisdictional boundaries between tribal, federal, and state companies. It passed unanimously in the Senate, although one Republican congressman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, who serves because the Residence Judiciary Committee chair, is stalling the bill in the Home of Representatives for unknown reasons, according to The Cut. Yet the bill isn’t abstract: Blocking it is affecting girls across the nation, including Aubrey.


For his part, Wells says, “Once there really is a period of time that passes, we attempt to give [a high-risk person's case] more emphasis due to the lifestyle risk she lives — the risk of something happening to her.” He added that the sheriff’s office is now continuing “to run leads and we have some added proposed searches in coordination with OSBI.”


Smith mentioned one of these leads was about two weeks prior as soon as someone logged into Aubrey’s MeetMe app and the IP address pinged back to an office in Irving, Texas. A March 20 story from Indianz announced that there has been a potential sighting of her at a nearby casino owned by the Quapaw Country. Neither of these leads led to finding Aubrey, although Smith mentioned it made her more optimistic about finding her niece.


“[I’m] relieved they didn’t find anything leading to foul play,” Smith mentioned. “It gives me hope she is out there alive somewhere.”