In January Tonya Bynum had nearly given up. Her 22-year-old son Maurice had been missing for eight weeks. She had to beg for police to take a missing persons report, and, as weeks went on and her gut told her that Maurice was more than missing, she begged again and again for more investigation.
“He just vanished off the scene of the earth,” she told Homicide Watch then. “Nobody’s heard anything. We’ve done everything we can do.”
Her instincts told her that Maurice was in danger. Or dead. The father of two children, an infant and a toddler, it wasn’t like him to just disappear, she said. And then there was a financial aid appointment at Westwood College scheduled for January 2. “He wouldn’t miss that,” she said.
Bynum said her son borrowed his sister’s car on Nov. 28 and drove from his home in Capitol Heights Md. to his girlfriend’s mother’s home in Southeast D.C. From there he was supposed to go to a dinner party, but he never arrived.
“I’ve kinda got a feeling that something went wrong,” Bynum said in January.
Yesterday, according to ABC7, Bynum found Maurice: the family had recieved a call that his sister’s car was in an Oxen Hill Md. impound lot. When Bynum went to get the car she discovered Maurice’s body in the trunk.
It was also just after Thanksgiving when neighbors who live on Kisconko Turn in Fort Washington said the same black Honda appeared apparently abandoned. No one knew at the time that a dead body was in the trunk.
Neighbors told ABC7 that several residents who live in the neighborhood complained to police on several occasions over several months about the car. Finally according to Bynun’s family, the car was towed by the county to an impound lot in Oxon Hill
Family members said Bynum’s mother received a certified letter on Monday telling her to come pick up the car.
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