BENDALE, W.Va. — With a soft, reassuring voice and a number family and community members in church, Reverend Ronald C. Brown led the first of what could be many memorials for Aliayah Lunsford, the three-year-old girl who went missing on September 24, 2011, and is now believed dead.
“More or less just talking to people,” Brown said, describing his role, Saturday. “Allowing them to know that Aliayah is safe in the arms of Jesus.”
It was a somber day for the community, according to Aliayah’s great aunt Vickie Bowen. But, she and Reverend Brown agreed it was a day that may be another step along the path to closure.
“They don’t have Aliayah’s body yet, but this gave them some closure that Aliayah is safe,” he said.
Rev. Brown, who has served Bendale United Methodist Church for the past four years, said it had been a day involving more goodbye’s for the family and community and a day that raised a number of difficult questions as well.
“What kind of a person would she be like today?” he said. “The picture’s, the updates on what she would like, when I saw them I said, ‘She’s a beautiful child.'”
Rev. Brown asked for the community to also pray for Aliayah’s mother, Lena Lunsford. She has been charged, more than five years after the initial disappearance, with child abuse by a parent causing death.
“She’s the one that can lead the detectives or Sheriff’s department to the body,” he said. “She can do that, I believe, through prayer from everybody.”
Police arrested Lunsford in Pinellas County Florida on November 3. She was extradited to West Virginia the next day.
Her preliminary hearing has been continued until Wednesday, November 16.