Milana Li was only 13 years-old when she was found deceased near her family's Beaverton, Oregon home on May 10th, 2022. The young girl was last seen alive on May 8th. Milana left her home around 4:00 PM that afternoon to take a walk along the Westside Regional Trail to Barrows Park. Milana regularly walked this route and was typically only gone for half an hour to an hour. When she did not return for her 8:00 PM curfew, her family members began to worry. Milana was reported missing the following day.
Milana and her family are originally from Kazakhstan. The family moved to Beaverton a few years before Milana's untimely death. Milana's mother lives full time in Beaverton with their children, while Milana's father travels back and forth between Beaverton and Kazakhstan, where he runs a business. Members of the community in Beaverton described Milana and a quiet and sweet young girl. When she was first reported missing, police classified her as a runaway-despite the fact that she has no history of such behavior.
Shortly after 2:00 PM on May 10th, police received a call about "suspicious circumstances" in a small stream at Westside Linear Park. When officers responded the scene, they found the body of a young girl in the water. A short time later, the young girl was identified as Milana Li.
An autopsy determined that Milana died by homicide. Police initially remained quiet about the investigation but maintained that there was no threat to the community. Still, Milana's death was both devastating and shocking to the people of Beaverton. That shock was amplified days later, when it was revealed that another teenager had been arrested and charged with Milana's murder.
The suspect: Daniel Ryan Gore.
On May 21st, 2022, it was announced that Daniel Ryan Gore was arrested and charged with Milana's murder. Gore was only 16 years-old at the time of the killing, but prosecutors quickly decided to try him as an adult. Gore has a criminal history dating back to 2020. He is currently facing second-degree theft, second-degree arson, and criminal mischief charges in an unrelated case.
In February 2022, Gore violated his probation. Prosecutors recommended that he be held in a juvenile detention center since he had already run away from two different shelters for minors with pending criminal charges. However, the judge ultimately decided to allow Gore to live with his father and stepmother in Salem. He ran away two weeks after this ruling.
In April 2022, Gore's father told Salem authorities that he believed his son was in Beaverton. For unclear reasons, those authorities failed to notify the Beaverton police. Gore's whereabouts remained unknown until his arrest for Milana's murder.
At the time of his arrest, police did not release information on how they tied Gore to Milana's case. Per the prosecution's request, the judge sealed the probable cause affidavit. It wasn't until Gore's 2024 trial that more details about the events leading up to Milana's murder were revealed.
November 2024: Gore's trial.
During Gore's trial, District Attorney John Gerhard told the jury that Gore was a teenage runaway who "worshipped gory music and serial killers." However, Gerhard noted the obsession with such things is not what drove Gore to kill. Instead, it was his own "dark decisions."
“It was his choice to take a vulnerable girl who trusted him and followed him into the woods," Gerhard told the jury. It was noted that, during May of 2022, Milana was trying to become friends with an older crowd when she met Gore. As previously noted, Gore had run away from his father's home in Salem back in February of 2022. At the time Milana and Gore became acquainted, Gore was living in a tent in a wooded area near Progress Ridge.
Milana and Gore agreed to meet up on the afternoon of May 8th. According to testimony/evidence presented at trial, the two spent that afternoon "aimlessly riding buses up and down Southwest Scholls Ferry Road" before Gore led Milana to a secluded area near his tent where he raped her and strangled her to death.
Gore's defense attorneys argued that Milana's sexual encounter with Gore was consensual, and there was otherwise no other evidence that Gore killed her. The jury ultimately sided with the prosecution and found him guilty of first-degree murder.
Gore is due to be sentenced on December 2nd, 2024.
Sources:
[KOIN]
[Oxygen]
she ugly as fuck G
ReplyDelete