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College Student Seen on Video Being Thrown from Car and Dying, But Police Are Puzzled As To What Caused the Tragedy
"Something happened and somebody knows something, and we just want those answers," Mia Kanu's mother said after police found her daughter lying on the road.
A 23-year-old veterinary student from Michigan died earlier this month from head trauma after mysteriously being ejected from a car.
Mia Kanu, a Tennessee State University senior, had just come home to Detroit for the summer when police found her lying on a Southfield, Michigan road in the early morning of June 3, WSMV reported. She was found outside an apartment complex where she had attended a party with friends that night.
Emergency services transported Kanu to a local hospital where she was put on life support.
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Kanu’s mother, Bianca Vanmeter, posted a video on Facebook, in which her daughter is seen being rolled down a hall to have her organs donated. Kanu was taken off life support on June 8. Police are still investigating what led up to her death.
Southfield police have obtained unreleased surveillance footage that shows Kanu being ejected from a vehicle hours before a passerby found her and called 911, according to Fox 2 Detroit. Police are unsure if Kanu fell or was pushed out of the car, but they are treating the investigation as a homicide.
"Something happened and somebody knows something, and we just want those answers," Vanmeter told Fox 2.
There were two other people in the car with Kanu that night, a driver and another passenger. They are reportedly cooperating with the police, according to CBS News Detroit.
"There were no deformities. No disfigurement. Nothing of that magnitude that at that point and time would imply any type of assault," Sgt. Jared Womble of the Southfield Police Department said. “As of now, we don’t have any evidence that would suggest another vehicle struck her.”
As police continue their investigation into how the incident unfolded, Kanu’s family is left with many unanswered questions.
"I was told nobody called 9-1-1, nobody reached out to anyone, and that speaks volumes on whoever did this," Vanmeter said to CBS Detroit.
"It's our understanding that there was an argument between the driver and another individual in the parking lot of the apartment complex that they had left," Southfield Deputy Police Chief Jeff Jagielski told Fox 2.
WXYZ reported that Jagielski said that Kanu suffered “significant head trauma."
Kanu was studying to become a veterinarian at Tennessee State University. Her mother told the Detroit Free Press that she loved animals and even adopted a cat named Tails while at school.
"I remember telling her when she got home from school, ‘Girl, this cat is raunchy,' ” her mother reportedly said, laughing.
Before she went home for the summer, Kanu was a veterinarian tech at Richland Animal Clinic in Tennessee and a part of the TSU Agricultural Department, where she spent time caring for various animals, according to the Free Press.
A spokesperson for the animal clinic told the Free Press that Kanu was very passionate about her job and that the staff is devastated about her death.
“She knew all the names and personalities of all the pet boarders that would board regularly with us, and she had big goals and dreams of having her own business and being a veterinarian," Dawn Elza, manager of Richland Animal Clinic, said.
Vanmeter told the Free Press that she and her family are distraught and are trying to plan a funeral while waiting on answers as to what happened to her daughter.
Kanu is survived by her mother, father, a stepmother, four sisters, a brother and many friends and other relatives.
A GoFundMe was launched in Kanu’s memory to help relieve the family of funeral expenses.
