The mystery of what happened to 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson, the Valdosta teen found dead inside a rolled-up mat in his high school’s gymnasium, could get a few more answers next week.
Attorneys for Johnson’s parents want a Valdosta judge to compel the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office to release a surveillance video from the gym. The video in question is from a camera that was pointed in the general direction of the mats, where Johnson’s body was found. The tape has been withheld because it was deemed an “academic record,” said Chevene B. King Jr., an attorney out of Albany who has been working on the case for the Johnson family since January.
“They claimed the students had a right to privacy,” King said. “We maintain that is a real stretch of anybody’s idea of what an academic record is.”
Johnson’s body was found the morning of Jan. 11 in the Lowndes High School gym. He was last seen Jan. 10 as he walked into the gym, headed to weightlifting class. Lowndes County sheriff’s investigators concluded he died in a freak accident, falling headfirst into an upright mat and becoming trapped. But Johnson’s family does not believe that is what happened.
“We really don’t know what happened,” said his mother, Jacquelyn Johnson.
“We don’t want to know some of the things that happened, we don’t want to know what might have happened, we want to know what happened,” added his father, Kenneth Johnson.
The Johnsons were in Atlanta on Thursday talking to several media outlets about their son and the investigation into his death. They believe the surveillance video will show them what the sheriff’s investigation did not.
Though this tragedy happened in South Georgia, people across the country should be outraged at the course of this investigation, said Ben Crump, a Tallahassee, Fla., attorney working with the family.
“His parents sent him to school with a book bag and he was returned to them the next day in a body bag,” Crump said. “Every parent in America who sends their child off to school has the reasonable expectation that their child will return. This is a parent’s worst nightmare.”
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