The family of Kendrick Johnson, the 17-year-old high school student who was found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat at his high school in 2013, announced on Tuesday that they were taking legal recourse against the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.
After a second, local investigation into the death of Kendrick Johnson was officially closed with no charges or arrests, nearly ten years after his body was discovered rolled-up inside of a gym mat, concluded his death was a freak accident, Johnson’s family continues to disagrees and maintains the high school basketball players was killed.
As previously reported, Johnson’s body was found on Jan. 11 in South Georgia. Investigators from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office said he died in a freak accident, saying that he fell headfirst into an upright mat and was trapped.
His body was found by school officials.
At the time, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Chief Medical Examiner said the death was an accident.
Still, in the intervening years, Johnson’s family has maintained that they believe he was killed.
The state medical examiner said he suffocated after reaching for a shoe that fell into the mat. However, a second autopsy ordered by the family found the teen had a blow to the neck.
In January 2013, investigators ruled that Johnson, a sophomore at Lowndes County High School in southern Georgia at the time, had died by an accident and closed the case. His parents and members of the community have pushed over the last nine years for additional investigations –– including into those who were initially involved in the case.
Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk released a statement Thursday (January 26) that the investigation he launched after taking office in 2020 would be officially closed.
Paulk described Johnson’s death as a “weird accident” to CNN, stating that “there is nothing to substantiate homicide.”
“Nothing criminal happened,” Paulk told the…
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