Family members, friends, and strangers gathered in Iowa City Wednesday night to remember Mollie Tibbetts, the young woman from Brooklyn, Iowa murdered while she was out for a jog.
People who knew Mollie and many who'd never met her, gathered on the campus of University of Iowa to share and listen to stories about the girl, who vanished while jogging more than a month ago. Some of the people in the crowd had helped search for Mollie over the past several weeks.
Police arrested a 24-year-old dairy farm worker who led them to her body buried about 10 miles from where Tibbetts was last spotted on home security cameras. They found her body Tuesday covered with corn stalks. Cristhian Rivera is charged with her murder.
Mollie’s brother, Jake Tibbetts, asked the crowd Wednesday not to remember Mollie for the tragic way in which she died, but to celebrate her for the remarkable life that she'd lived.
“The stories you've heard about Mollie over the past month are incredible,” Jake said. “She was incredible. And we uh, we know we're going to miss her dearly. What made her so special is that she was like anyone standing here. She loved to run. She loved Harry Potter. She loved the Hawks. She loved her family. She loved her friends. She was goofy. She was clumsy, you know. She made mistakes. She owned up to them. She fought with her siblings, a lot. Um that's what we're going miss the most," Jake says.
“What made her so special is she was so outgoing, so loving, so passionate. She wasn't a silent person in the literal sense in that when she talked, everyone in the room heard her. Because she was so outgoing, take a couple of minutes here and find someone you've never met before and talk to them, meet them, make a new friend tonight because that's what she would do. She'd make friends with every single person in the crowd if she could."