An investigation is ongoing, but family and friends of two Tampa, Fla., teenagers found hog-tied on the side of a street in Jacksonville, Fla., are left with questions as they mourn the young women.
“It’s awful,” Mikayla Green, a friend of 19-year-old Angelia Mangum, one of the deceased, told the Tampa Tribune. “It’s inhumane. No one deserves that, especially her. I can’t imagine her not being alive.”
Green met Mangum about seven years ago at the Children’s Home in Tampa, which helps support children from broken families, the Tribune reports.
“She was an all-around nice person,” the 21-year-old recalled of the young woman who helped her feel so welcome when she first arrived at the home. “I never saw her stress about anything.”
“She had a spontaneous laugh that would echo throughout the hallway,” said another friend from the home, Krystina Keaton, adding that Mangum was also a bit of a prankster who would hide to scare someone. “She had so much potential. She was so smart.”
But Mangum and her 18-year-old friend, Tjhisha Monique Ball, met a grisly end: They were found Thursday hog-tied together and tossed to the side of a street in a pool of blood.
According to the Tribune, the two young women met as teenagers and became close friends, working together at exotic dance clubs in Jacksonville.
Ball’s sister Crystal Moore said that funeral arrangements for the young woman are planned for Saturday. The family reportedly is hoping to have the two young women remembered together at the same funeral service.
No arrests have been made; nor has a cause of death been released by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
“We have to come together to find out who this person, or persons, is,” Moore told the Tribune.
Read more at the Tampa Tribune.