Photo courtesy of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A Georgia sheriff has ruled the death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson “a weird accident” despite the teenager being found inside a rolled-up gym mat. Johnson was seen on video footage entering the gymnasium at Lowndes High School on January 10, 2013, in Valdosta, Ga.
The teenager was found deceased the following day by a teacher, and local authorities deemed Johnson’s death an accident. Athletes routinely kept belongings inside rolled-up gym mats during practice and tipped them over afterward to retrieve their belongings.
Authorities said that because extra mats were stacked on the day Johnson entered the gym, he would have had to crawl inside one to get his belongings and somehow became trapped.
An FBI investigation began in 2013 but ended in 2016, citing insufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Johnson’s parents, Jackie and Kenneth, believe their son was murdered by three boys, Branden Bell, his brother, Brian, and another friend, who are all white. The Johnsons filed a wrongful death lawsuit against them in 2015 and alleged Sheriff Chris Prine and Lowndes County Superintendent Wes Taylor covered up the crime for Rick Bell, the boys’ father and former FBI agent.
The case was dropped for insufficient evidence after the family’s ex-lawyer, Chevene King, was accused of trying to fabricate evidence. Video footage of Johnson entering the gym was also reportedly recorded after the boys had left town for a wrestling tournament.
Paulk noted their whereabouts could be verified by the boys’ arrival documented via weigh-ins. The family claimed such evidence could have easily been altered.
The case was reopened in 2020. However, the current sheriff, Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk, came to the same conclusion as Prine and called Johnson’s death a “weird accident.”
“When I came back to be sheriff, a lot of people said that they felt like it needed looking into ‘cause there were a lot of questions unanswered,” he said. “It’s a weird accident.”
The 76-six-year-old Paulk also described the FBI investigation as a witch hunt into the cover-up. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in 2013 that Johnson’s cause of death was positional asphyxia and noted the teenager had probably suffocated after getting trapped upside-down in the rolled-up mat.
A 2014 report by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death as asphyxiation caused by accident but later amended the ruling to “undetermined.”
A documentary was made about the case called Finding Kendrick Johnson in 2021. Actress Jenifer Lewis, who narrated and directed the film, publically called on Congress to investigate Johnson’s death.
“This is the most important film I’ve ever worked on,” said Lewis. “What this family has gone through is unspeakable, but we must speak it, so the public knows the truth. You know how much evidence the FBI has to have to storm somebody’s house with guns AK- 47s out? And then when they got in there and saw that it was an FBI agent, it was just pushed under the rug, just pushed under the rug. Another Black kid. So what?”
A forensic pathologist hired by Kenneth Johnson found that his son was killed by blunt-force trauma to the neck, near the jaw on the right side. Jackie Johnson was not surprised by Paulk’s conclusion.
“Y’all please know we’re not worried. We already knew Paulk was gone lie,” she wrote. “We’re still pushing justice for Kendrick Johnson. We stand on Kendrick was murdered and it’s already done.”
Kenneth Johnson agreed with his wife.
“We will keep pushing forward,” said Mr. Johnson. “The truth, what happened to Kendrick, there is no stopping it.”