A month after a 17-year-old died under the guardianship of a Memphis group home, her family and their lawyers are demanding the organization and law enforcement release video footage of the incident the family claims precipitated her death.
Alegend Jones’ mother, Shona Garner-White, told reporters this week that a surveillance video of her daughter’s final hours inside Youth Villages in the Memphis suburb of Bartlett, Tennessee, is so awful a police insider told her that she was unable finish it.
Jones died at Methodist Hospital in Memphis on Nov. 17, one day after she was taken there from Youth Villages in response to what the nonprofit facility calls “a medical emergency.”
The day before Jones died she reportedly had been transported from the group home for an appointment at the Shelby County Health Department. It was there, the family claims, that Jones was told to strip in front of two male counselors and she refused, leading to a counselor “body-slamming” her.
Youth Villages disputes this account, saying Jones was accompanied by female counselors for her appointment.
Reports say the teen was taken back to the group home that day, and that’s where “it is alleged that over a dozen counselors at Youth Villages assaulted and battered this teenage child,” according to civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
Crump has been hired by the family to represent their interests. At a press conference on Thursday, Dec. 21, held at the local NAACP chapter building, he demanded transparency from all parties involved.
“This should not be that difficult to get to the truth. They act like this cause of death is such a mystery,” the attorney said, according to Fox 13.
He added if authorities at the facility or in law enforcement wanted them to shut up, they should simply “show the video.”
“The video will show us what happened,” Crump said. “Everybody will be able to make logical conclusions based on the diagnosis…
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