A 22-year-old South Carolina mother has been found dead weeks after she went missing during a birthday trip in which she told her family she felt unsafe.
The body of Ta’Haley Payton was discovered in Charlotte on December 11, more than three weeks after she was reported missing, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
Payton and her boyfriend share a 6-month-old daughter and had traveled from Spartanburg to Charlotte on November 19.
The day after, the pair had an argument, and it led ‘her boyfriend to return home without her’, Payton’s friend Kelanie Davis told the Charlotte Observer.
Payton was then left stranded as she had “no phone, no money, no resources,” Davis said.
After the argument, Payton called her mother from a pub, stating that she felt unsafe and planned to walk to a nearby Burger King, as per a Fox 10 report.
A few hours later, she texted loved ones and said a friend was coming to pick her up, but that never happened.
Payton was last seen on November 20 and was found dead nearly a month later.
“She always said to everybody, never give up, and she always told me how pretty I was,” Davis told the Charlotte Observer. “She made sure everybody was confident in themselves. And she knew how pretty she was. She did.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said that investigations into Payton’s death are ongoing, though a cause of death is yet to be disclosed.
Payton’s family revealed last week that she had been hospitalized for postpartum depression and released on November 20, the day she disappeared, according to WBTV.
“I just want my best friend to get the justice she deserves and to lay her easy at rest,” Davis said.
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The family of the South Carolina mother have been left devastated after receiving the news and they are eagerly waiting for developments into the case as they believe there is more to Payton’s disappearance and death.
