- Sania Khan, a 29-year-old photographer, was found dead in her Chicago apartment on July 18.
- Police say her ex-husband, Raheel Ahmed, killed her in a murder-suicide.
On the day Sania Khan was found dead in her Chicago apartment, a friend was on her way to help her pack and drive her down to Tennessee.
Khan, 29, was supposed to move back to her hometown Chattanooga. But ahead of the move, her ex-husband killed her, police said.
The friend, Gabriella Bordó, was at the airport that day when she first tried calling Khan, according to two close friends who recounted the day's events to Insider. Bordó, ahead of boarding her flight to Chicago, dialed her number on her iPhone, but the call went unanswered.
"That's weird," Jessica Henderson-Eubanks told Bordó, who had called her to say Khan didn't pick up the phone. "Because I had just talked to her."
Henderson-Eubanks, in an interview with Insider, said she called Khan, one of her best friends, after getting off the phone with Bordó. Then she tried to text her — but the normal blue message bubbles in their iPhone text chat had suddenly turned green, an indicator that something was seriously off, Henderson-Eubanks said.
"Messaged her Instagram. No answer. Started getting really worried," Henderson-Eubanks recalled.
She called Bordó back, who asked Henderson-Eubanks to pass on the Chicago address where Khan was staying.
"So I sent her Sania's address in Chicago. And then, my husband started calling her building and tried to talk to the doorman and see if he could go check on her," Henderson-Khan said. "Doorman couldn't do it. Wouldn't give out any info."
Then they learned she was dead.
On Bordó's way to Chicago, Khan's dad called her, Henderson-Eubanks said. Bordó then called Henderson-Eubanks.
"I couldn't even understand what she was saying on the phone," she said. "She was crying, but I just knew. Somehow, I just knew that she was gone."
Leading up to the move, the three friends — Khan, Bordó, and Henderson-Eubanks — had big plans to hang out. Khan's lease in Chicago had run up, according to Grant Moore, her childhood friend. She had been planning to move in with Bordó and live in a house that was three minutes away from Henderson-Eubanks.
When he heard the news of her death, Moore was shocked. "It didn't seem real. It didn't seem possible," he told Insider.
She and her ex-husband, 36-year-old Raheel Ahmed, had already divorced. The Chicago apartment in which Khan lived was at one point shared with Ahmed.
But she had changed the locks on the door after the divorce, Moore said.
On social media, Khan, a photographer who was widely followed on TikTok and Instagram, oftentimes posted life updates, such as one saying that she'd planned on making the move from Chicago back to Chattanooga, Moore said.
"If he's able to see that," Moore continued, "he would then know, 'Okay, this is my last day where I will know exactly where she is.'"
"For her to feel safe enough and removed enough from him to share that, even though he was still there, is what's terrifying," he added.
Friends who spoke with Insider described her as a person with an effervescent, generous spirit who endlessly uplifted and supported them. She was the main "hype guy" for Moore, for example, in the months leading up to his wedding. And she made Henderson-Eubanks feel strong enough to quit her day job to pursue freelancing full-time.
Her death feels "like a horror movie," Henderson-Eubanks said.
"I wasn't prepared for it to become a viral moment," Moore said. "The first day, I started seeing articles everywhere on the Internet. It kind of felt like the world was just gazing into my open wound."
Henderson-Eubanks keeps replaying all their shared memories in her head. She remembers a spontaneous photo shoot at Joshua Tree, where they met a photographer in the desert.
"She was usually the one behind the camera," Henderson-Eubanks recalled.
"But just seeing her feel beautiful and confident like that, I keep looking back at those videos that I took of her on that day, and it's just, it doesn't make me sad — it makes me happy that she got to experience that."