‘They took everything’: an Indigenous town rocked by the killings of young people

In Covelo, an isolated town in northern California, back-to-back slayings are the most recent chapter of violence arising from colonisation

Marline Fulwider is no stranger to grief. As a young woman, she lost her 23-year-old brother; years later, her 25-year-old son-in-law, whom she had previously taken in as a foster child, was killed.

But nothing could have prepared Fulwider for the morning of 16 April, when another teen she had taken in was found beaten to death. Ruby Sky Montelongo was just 16 years old.