Where’s Khalil?

“Everybody was looking for him,” Milli said. “Nobody knew where he was. Nobody knew what happened. … He wasn’t answering the phone.” 

“Once he got out of the car, that was the last time everybody seen him.”

“I had spoken to him the day he went missing,” Lopez said. “We were actually supposed to get together that night, but because I got off work very late, I was tired, so I just wasn’t up for being around anyone. … It was just something that I was hoping to push to the next day.” 

“But then, when his mom called me looking for him and telling me she hasn’t seen him since Saturday, my heart just dropped because I’m like, ‘No. What do you mean? I was just talking to him.’” 

“ And a couple hours later, she call[ed] me and she [told] me that he was gone and that they had found him in Crystal Lake. And, um, he was dead. He wasn’t here anymore.”

Henderson recalled the day Azad’s body was discovered. “His friend wrote to me and was like, ‘He’s dead,’ and I was pregnant. I was eight months pregnant.”

“I just remember falling to the floor, just screaming, crying. I didn’t have [any] answers. I didn’t. I was losing my mind. I don’t think there’s really no words that could describe that pain I felt.”

I felt like somebody was stabbing me in the heart. That’s what it feels like when I see these photos.” 

— Khalil Ahmad Azad’s long-time girlfriend, Carvona Henderson

Azad was found lifeless, floating face down in Crystal Lake’s shores two days after his run-in with police. His skin, stained purple and blue after his heart could no longer pump blood through his body, was swollen and disfigured like bruised fruit. His eyes protruded from their sockets as if they were unreal. His nose was slanted from being broken, and his face torn with scars. 

This was no longer the Azad who once stood 6 feet tall with gorgeous brown locs and a warm, welcoming smile. Azad was unrecognizable.

“When I first seen the [autopsy photos], I literally had a physical reaction and jumped,” Traheren Crews, founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, said.

“I mean, I had heard about this earlier in the summer. But to actually see it? … They said he was beaten worse than Emmett Till and then once I seen the photos I was like, ‘Wow.’” 

Milli has a similar reaction. “I didn’t even know what to say; I thought it was a joke,” she said. “Nobody believed that, that was him. …’Cause you know, Kalil was a handsome person. He was handsome.”

Lopez, like many others, thought it was unreal. “I just felt like I froze. I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t put it to him because it just, it looks nothing like him. His whole face is disoriented. It’s not even the man that I know.”

“It’s something you literally see in a movie,” Henderson said. “You wouldn’t think that, that could possibly happen to a human. It’s inhumane. I felt like somebody was stabbing me in the heart. That’s what it feels like when I see these photos.”