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A 16-year-old Michigan girl who was set to testify against her alleged rapist was found dead in the woods, less than a week after she went missing.

Her name was Mujey Dumbuya.

According to Buzzfeed, Mujey’s family reported her missing on Jan. 25 after she didn’t come home from school. Sadly, the Grand Rapids teen was found in the woods nearly 50 miles away in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Police have ruled her death a homicide and sources are telling the media that authorities believe the man she claimed raped her is also responsible for her tragic death.

In November of 2017, Mujey told police that Quinn Anthony James, a groundskeeper for her school district, had raped her several times in the past year. James, 42, was later charged with four counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, but as Buzzfeed noted, because this was his fourth count, he was looking at a mandatory 25 year sentence.

He was also ordered to stay away from her.

FOX 26 News reported that the teen told police that James raped her in a car in a school parking lot after school hours. Just before the alleged assault took place, she claims James told her: “There is something about you. I could stop, but I just can’t.”

Mujey was supposed to testify in court in April.

Because her killing is an ongoing investigation, Kalamazoo police won’t confirm to the public or the media that James is an actual suspect.

What’s even more infuriating about this story is that James had multiple prior convictions going back to 1991 for armed robbery and possessing a weapon while in prison. And yet, he was still hired by the Kentwood Public Schools.

Not surprisingly, school officials claim to not have known about James’ past, but stress that when they learned of his criminal past, they fired him.

“However, when the criminal charges came to the attention of the school leadership, the district took immediate action to investigate, interview, and subsequently terminate the employment of Mr. James,” superintendent Michael Zoerhoff told Buzzfeed.

“His failure to be forthcoming around the assault charges and acts of misconduct violating Board and District policies and state laws led to his dismissal.”

Knowing that way too often when Black girls go missing they are quickly labeled runaways by the police, Mujey’s family stressed early on that the teen never would have done that.

“She didn’t run away. What would make her run away?” her aunt Haja Corneh told Fox News17 last week.

“She has a family that loves her. She has everybody around her that loves her. What would make her run away?”

Mujey’s death comes weeks after Virginia teen Jholie Moussa’s body was discovered in the woods some two weeks after police initially labeled her a runaway.Police believe Jholie’s murderer is her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend.

In the meantime, James was arrested on Feb. 1 and is currently in jail for a completely unrelated rape case of a teen that alleges he assaulted her back in 2014.

This is a developing story and we will provide updates as they become available. 

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#SayHerName: 16-Year-Old Set To Testify Against Her Alleged Rapist Found Dead  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com