RFP Staff
♦ Elisha Maurice Walker, 20, a transgender woman from Salisbury missing since November 2014, was found dead Thursday in a shallow grave in a wooded area behind a house on Homestead Lane in Johnson County. Walker’s body was identified by her physical description and personal property.
Johnson County Sheriff’s deputies arrested and charged Angel Arias, an alleged Latin Kings gang member from Hemlock Drive in Salisbury, with Walker’s homicide.
Walker was reported missing by her family after family and friends lost contact with her in late October. Walker, prior to her disappearance, kept regular contact with her family and friends phone calls, texts, and Facebook, but all that stopped in late October and her family became alarmed.
Walker’s 2000 silver Pontiac was found burned near the town of Clinton in Sampson County, N.C. The fire appeared intentionally set. Not long after Angel Arias, living on Hemlock Drive in Salisbury, became a “person of interest” in Walker’s disappearance. In early August the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office was alerted that Arias was being held on drug charges in the Johnston County Jail. Not long after the house on Homestead Lane in Johnston County was identified as a possible location for Walker’s body.
Thursday investigators found Walker’s body in a shallow grave in woods behind the house on Homestead Lane. Soon after Walker was IDed and brought to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Raleigh for an autopsy and final positive ID.
Arias, awaiting transport back to Rowan County, was charged with murder (felony) and larceny of a motor vehicle (felony). He is currently being held in the Johnston County Jail.
