Rejection Killing
Five women in the United States, from Pembroke Pines to Minneapolis, who said no to a man and were killed for it. What the courts found, and what changed afterward.
By Teona Abuladze · 8 min read
This one is two months old.
In August 2026, Shakeema Davis was at a cookout in Lincoln Terrace Park with 15 to 20 people, including her 7-year-old son. According to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, a man who showed up kept asking her to have sex with him. She kept saying no. At some point she threw a drink on him. He attacked her. Police found her with multiple stab wounds shortly after 12:40 a.m. She died at Brookdale Hospital.
When police released her name, they were still looking for the man and asked the public for help identifying him. I found no report of an arrest.
What the pattern looks like
Read the five cases together and the details start to repeat.
The men were not strangers in a dark alley. Lopez Xique had been on shopping trips with Kayli. Caballero worked in Miya’s building. McKinney and Janese partied in the same bar. The rejection wasn’t a surprise to any of them; in most of these cases she had said no more than once.
And access mattered. Caballero had a master key. Lopez Xique never got Kayli’s phone number from her. He found her personal information on paid people-search websites, and used them to track down her parents and her sisters too. Kayli’s family has asked for reforms to dating apps. A Minnesota bill that would force data brokers to register with the state attorney general was introduced in March 2026 and, as far as I can find, never made it out of committee. The data industry’s trade group lobbied against it.
She never gave him her number. He bought her address.
Her older sister Heather Arseth spoke after the sentencing. Heather swam for Mauritius at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics and graduated from the University of Miami in 2015. She said Kayli had been kind and clear with him, and that he killed her in an act of revenge after knowing her for three and a half weeks. The family wore matching dragonfly pins.
Where the label gets misused
Not every case that circulates under this name holds up.
Online lists of women “killed for saying no” often include Tiarah Poyau, a 22-year-old St. John’s graduate student shot in the face at Brooklyn’s J’Ouvert festival in 2016. Her death was a horror. But the jury acquitted the shooter, Reginald Moise, of murder and convicted him of criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors described her as an innocent bystander. The court record does not establish that she rejected him.
Accuracy matters here for a practical reason. If this is going to be counted one day, and it should be, the count has to be built on cases where the motive is in the record, the way it is in Kayli Arseth’s file. Otherwise it’s easy to dismiss.
There is also a real limit to what any law can do. Miya’s Law would not have saved Samyia Spain in a bodega. A data broker registry would not have stopped the man at the cookout. Most of these killings happen in the gap between a man hearing “no” and deciding it doesn’t apply to him, and no statute reaches into that gap.
What it can do is make the next one harder. A key log. A background check. An address that costs more than a credit card swipe to find.
Kayli Arseth’s killer will die in prison. The websites that sold him her address are still online.
Teona Abuladze is the founder and editor of Shansi Magazine.
If you are being harassed, stalked, or are afraid of someone who won’t accept your “no,” support exists. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential: 800-799-7233, or text BEGIN to 88788.
Sources:
FOX 9, sentencing (Oct 15, 2026): fox9.com/news/rejection-killing-sentencing-judge-man-life-prison-oct-15-2026 · FOX 9, verdict (Oct 9, 2026): fox9.com/news/rejection-killing-man-guilty-murder-fatal-shooting-richfield-oct-9-2026 · KARE 11, sentencing · Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, charges (July 2025) · Bring Me The News, sentencing and family statement (Oct 17, 2026); verdict; remembrance (2025) · WCCO, family on people-search sites and dating apps · Star Tribune, charges (2025) · AOL/People, Snapchat messages · Miami Hurricanes, Heather Arseth (2016) · ABC Australia on Lily Thacker and Pew data (2021) · Orange County Sheriff via CBS News and Yahoo (2021) · The Daily Beast, Miya Marcano deputy report · NBC Miami, family’s criticism · Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Miya’s Law (June 27, 2022) · Sun Sentinel, Miya’s Law · NBC News, Gothamist, FOX 5 NY and PIX11 on Samyia Spain (2024) · New York Daily News via Yahoo, surveillance video · WPXI and TribLive on Charles McKinney’s plea · KDKA/CBS Pittsburgh, preliminary hearing · The National News Desk via ABC News 4, Shakeema Davis (Aug 2026) · CBS New York and Brooklyn Eagle, Reginald Moise sentencing (2019) · Minnesota Revisor of Statutes, HF 4456 · Consumer Data Industry Association letter on HF 4456
