{"id":427113,"date":"2026-10-14T00:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T00:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/427113\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T00:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T00:38:10","slug":"uhuru-movement-says-it-will-investigate-hanging-death-of-black-st-pete-woman-as-a-homicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/427113\/","title":{"rendered":"Uhuru Movement says it will investigate hanging death of Black St. Pete woman as a homicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Nevela
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNevela Williams
\nCredit: Valerie Smith.<\/p>\n

By Colin Wolf and Valerie Smith<\/p>\n

The International People\u2019s Democratic Uhuru Movement announced today that it is investigating a local death as a homicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Syriah Henderson, a 29-year-old Black woman and mother of three, was found hanging from a tree behind a St. Petersburg Dollar Tree on July 1, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The St. Petersburg Police Department and medical examiner said the death was a suicide, stating there were no injuries inconsistent with suicide or signs of a struggle.<\/p>\n

The Uhuru Movement<\/a>\u2014a socialist Black nationalist group that has been headquartered in St. Petersburg since 1972\u2014said it is suspicious of the police department\u2019s findings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Henderson\u2019s mother, Nevela Williams, said she wasn\u2019t satisfied with the results of the investigation at a press conference at the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg this morning.<\/p>\n

Williams said she did some investigating of her own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI even questioned the people that work at the churches across there,\u201d she told the media. \u201cThey said they have a camera. Why didn\u2019t the detectives go over and get that camera? Why didn\u2019t they go to the neighbors\u2019 houses, knock on the door for footage? We\u2019re in the 2000s now, we all have some kind of surveillance somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP made a social media post<\/a> in July saying the police department had taken appropriate investigative actions and warned of spreading misinformation.<\/p>\n

The police department told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that Henderson had a history of mental health issues involving self-harm. They said they showed Williams the case photos and the site of the incident to walk her through the findings.<\/p>\n

Still, Chimurenga Waller with the Uhuru Movement said he\u2019ll be leading an investigation, starting with what he thinks the police department missed:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very baffling to us. It\u2019s very baffling that the police would immediately say it\u2019s suicide. Then, five days later, they send a detective and say, \u2018Now go find out if it was actually a suicide.\u2019 That doesn\u2019t make any sense. They should have been investigating it as a homicide from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waller said he\u2019ll track down witnesses\u2014including someone he said left the scene on bike after alerting employees to Henderson\u2019s body\u2014review additional surveillance footage, and ask for DNA testing.<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s still waiting on the autopsy report.<\/p>\n

Williams remembered her daughter as a happy person who was homeless \u201cby choice\u201d and had worked to overcome her struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe did some bad things, turned it around, and she even got herself to a drug program and all of that,\u201d Williams said. \u201cShe wanted everything focused on [her daughter] because it was her first time ever being a real mom, and that\u2019s all she wanted. And she didn\u2019t get a chance to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three members of the Uhuru Movement were convicted of conspiracy in 2024 after initially being charged with being unregistered foreign agents of Russia. Prosecutors said they were interfering with elections on behalf of a foreign government.<\/p>\n

The three got no jail time.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nevela Williams Credit: Valerie Smith. By Colin Wolf and Valerie Smith The International People\u2019s Democratic Uhuru Movement announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[5705,95343,30275,6121,1062,4070,13703,30415,132,12667,202,204,203,199,201,200,167918],"class_list":["post-427113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-african-american","tag-black-women","tag-civil-rights","tag-criminal-justice","tag-human-rights","tag-mental-health","tag-naacp","tag-news-and-public-affairs","tag-police","tag-race","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-uhuru-solidarity-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}