It has been greater than 12 years since 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was discovered lifeless and wrapped up in a gymnasium mat at a highschool in Lowndes County, Georgia, and Kendrick’s household is nonetheless preventing to carry him some semblance of justice—or at the very least set the document straight about how the teenager’s loss of life was not just a few unexplainable freak accident that nobody particularly is chargeable for.
In keeping with WMGT 41, Kendrick’s mother and father, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, mentioned in courtroom paperwork pertaining to a $12 million lawsuit they filed final month that their son didn’t die the way in which it’s listed on his official state loss of life certificates, and so they need it modified.
Kenneth and Jacquelyn are suing the Georgia Division of Public Well being over its refusal to vary the teenager’s explanation for loss of life from unintentional positional asphyxia to non-accidental blunt power trauma. As we beforehand reported, an impartial post-mortem reportedly revealed that Kendrick suffered a blow to the neck earlier than he died.
“We’ve filed the precise paperwork,” Kenneth mentioned. “We’ve filed a number of totally different occasions to get his loss of life certificates corrected.”
The lawsuit additionally claims the second post-mortem report discovered accidents to Kendrick’s inner organs and features a photograph of his organs saved inside a biohazard bag, which his mother and father mentioned is all of a sudden no the place to be discovered.
“They need to simply dismiss proof of what occurred to Kendrick, and we is not going to permit them to do this,” mentioned the teenager’s father.
From the Miami Herald:
The brand new proof obtained by the Johnsons within the final a number of months, based on the lawsuit, contains features a photograph from his post-mortem carried out by a state health worker with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who dominated Kendrick died of “unintentional positional asphyxiation” — a conclusion his mother and father say is fake.
In keeping with the lawsuit, pictures from the preliminary post-mortem present Kendrick’s inner organs have been “severely injured.” This contradicts the GBI health worker’s report that famous he had no main accidents, the grievance says.
Photographs of Kendrick’s physique at his highschool point out he was stomped on “with excessive power,” based on the grievance.
Pictures present “extremely seen tread marks from the underside of a shoe on Kendrick’s stomach,” the grievance says.
The lawsuit challenges what it describes as a “scientifically and bodily not possible narrative” that Kendrick “died from a freak accident throughout faculty hours,” nonetheless, the GBI continues to face by the unique ruling of the bureau’s chief health worker.
“GBI Medical Examiner’s Workplace performed an intensive post-mortem on this case,” GBI public affairs director Sara Lue advised the Herald final week. “The case is closed, and we stand behind our unique findings.”
In January, Kendrick’s household filed a $1 billion federal lawsuit in opposition to a number of regulation enforcement companies concerned in Kendrick’s case, together with the Lowndes County Medical Examiner, the sheriff’s workplace, and the GBI, accusing the companies of masking up what the household believes to be the teenager’s homicide. In keeping with WMGT, the household additionally filed a wrongful loss of life lawsuit in opposition to the Lowndes County Board of Training, claiming Kendrick had been repeatedly attacked and harassed by a white pupil, and that one other pupil on the faculty “had a historical past of frightening and attacking” the Black teen.
“If Kendrick was white, his household wouldn’t be going by way of this proper now,” his father mentioned. “However because it’s a Black baby, these individuals don’t care. However we care. And we are going to push for the reality. And we are going to push for every little thing to be proper.”
Yeah — all of us nonetheless care.
Black individuals throughout social media have, for years, refused to let Kendrick Johnson’s story go. He didn’t up and die out of skinny air, and he definitely didn’t roll himself up in a gymnasium mat after he died.
His loss of life continues to go unexplained and swept beneath the proverbial rug as an accident nobody is chargeable for.
We nonetheless aren’t shopping for it, and we hope his household receives all of the solutions and each little bit of the justice they deserve.
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