A Black woman was missing for 12 days before she was found dead inside a parked police van in Alabama

• An Alabama woman was found dead in a parked police van on October 7, The Washington Post reported.
• Christina Nance's family had reported her missing on October 2.

A Black woman was missing for 12 days before she was found dead in a prisoner-transport van parked in Huntsville, Alabama, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Surveillance footage released by the Huntsville Police Department on Friday showed a person, believed to be Christina Nance, 29, getting into the van parked outside police headquarters and moving around on September 25.

Nance was reported missing on October 2, the police said. Her body was discovered on October 7. WHNT reported that an officer walking past the van, which was no longer in use, had noticed Nance's body.

Nance's family, now being represented by the attorney Ben Crump, told the news station they were looking for answers.

"We will get to the truth of what happened to Christina Nance," Crump said in a tweeted statement on Thursday, adding, "We lift up Christina's family with prayer as they mourn this devastating loss."

The police said an initial assessment by the coroner's office showed no signs of trauma or foul play.

In a press conference on Friday, Huntsville Deputy Police Chief DeWayne McCarver said the surveillance footage showed Nance wandering around the parking lot outside the police headquarters and entering the van on September 25. The footage shows movement in the van until September 28, he said.

However, Nance's family has said she was last seen on September 27.

Nance's family told WAFF, an NBC affiliate in Huntsville, that the video was not clear enough to show that the person getting into the van was Nance. They said they still don't have answers.

"The dates was off, the times was off on the video," Nance's sister Whitney Nance said. "It was just very unsettling to know that, OK, we came down here for video footage for confirmation, and we felt as if we didn't get that."

WAFF reported that the prisoner-transport van was designed so that people could get in but not out.

McCarver said Nance should not have been able to get into the van.

"It is an accountability issue on our part," he said, according to The Post. "That should not have happened. And now we have to look at that, and we have to make sure that we have things in place so that does not happen again."

McCarver added that while officers are in the area every day, they never heard Nance call out for help.

"Cars go by, people walk nearby the van," McCarver said, according to The Post. "We just wish that she would have hollered out to someone or something, because unfortunately there were what we see as potential opportunities for this to not be a tragedy."

Nance's family told WHNT that she was sweet and quiet and "never bothered anybody."

In a statement, Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels called for an independent autopsy.

"We need to fully understand what happened to Ms. Nance so that we may prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future," Daniels said.