Maine State Police are investigating a fatal hit-and-run at Acadia National Park.
Police are looking into the death of 35-year-old Nicole Mokeme of South Portland. The hit-and-run happened on the campus of the Schoodic Education and Research Center sometime between Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning.
Police are asking for the public’s help finding a vehicle that may have been involved. It’s a 2016 black BMW SUV with Maine registration 5614WM. It’s registered to a 35-year-old Portland man. The vehicle may have some front-end or undercarriage damage.
Anyone who sees the vehicle is asked to immediately call Maine State Police and not to approach it.
Mokeme was the founder of Rise and Shine Youth Retreats, and was in Acadia for a “Black Excellence Retreat 2022”, being held at the Schoodic Institute. The retreat was the second held with their partners at the Institute and was described as “a getaway for Black folks and their friends and families of all backgrounds to join together in community to celebrate Juneteenth, liberation, and black excellence” said a post from the group’s Instagram account.
In 2020, Mokeme was featured by the Portland Press Herald as a “Mainer to be Thankful For.” Mokeme talked about how she had come to love camping after moving to Maine in 2008 from the Philadelphia area. “When we think of wellness or yoga, we usually think of white women,” Mokeme said. “I wanted young black women to see Black women, who are a little older than them, in this field and sharing wellness.” Mokeme lived in Bowdoin and, in 2014, founded Rise and Shine Youth Retreat, a farm and retreat center in Bowdoin that offers cooperative living, outdoors programs, retreats, and a plant share. Mokeme hoped to inspire and create a diverse community of teenage girls who could celebrate their Blackness, their diversity, and each other.
