Georgia Coroner Files Two Investigations For One Death

Remember this post, about a seventeen year old young man named Kendrick Johnson? Kendrick died in January of this year, and when he did not come home from school, was later found rolled up in a gym mat at his school, the victim of a brutal murder. The crime scene was never locked down, because the basketball game was too important to the school. Evidence...what little was collected....was sloppily handled, and Kendrick's parents were given vague to blatantly dishonest answers about how their son died. Police actually tried to sell them a story of their son's death as an accident. Kendrick had actually been beaten and then hidden inside of a gym mat. No one gets rolled up in a gym mat by accident.  It looks to this blogger as if there is a perpetrator who is too special, for all the wrong reasons, to be held accountable for his or her crimes. "His", most likely; because when the formerly "non-existent" surveillance footage finally became existent, thanks to Anderson Cooper's coverage of the case, the others ON FILM who were present in the gym when this happened, although previously reported not present, are best described with masculine pronouns.

Something else quite disturbing that has come out of all this is that there are apparently two death certificates currently on file for Kendrick. Chances are, there was only one death certificate at first. Authorities in Lowndes County, Georgia were probably arrogant enough to think that they could rule any cause of death they chose, no matter how far fetched. The Justice Department wasn't even worried about it! At least, not until Anderson Cooper and CNN got involved. Then, all of a sudden, federal prosecutors changed their minds and decided to look at this again. A court order allowing Kendrick's parents to get a second opinion on the cause of death was also helpful. But why did a second death certificate, which had not been shared with Kendrick's family, also surface?

One should only need a medical second opinion over a diagnosis involving a treatable illness. A second opinion should never be a necessity to explain a cause of death, especially to grieving parents of a once healthy child. From the principal of Lowndes County High School to the Justice Department, which initially did not want to re-examine this case until CNN got involved: how do these people sleep at night? No one needs two birth certificates for one lifetime; no one needs two death certificates for one lifetime. Thank the Gods we have CNN to fix these problems for us! Its hard to tell, anymore, when our local governments will find it necessary to lie to our parents about what happened while we were in school.

Here's another perspective on this whole matter.
 

Kendrick Johnson Was Killed At School

Kendrick Johnson, a seventeen year old Lowndes County Georgia student,  didn't come home from school one day in January of this year. He didn't make it to a basketball game, either. On January 11, he was found deceased, rolled up in a gym mat. The death was ruled an accident, and some truly insane speculations were made concerning how he got into the gym mat. No evidence was analyzed, no witnesses were interviewed, the crime scene wasn't even taped off; Kendrick was found shortly after ten in the morning, and police did not investigate the surroundings or begin to look for evidence until after three in the afternoon, even though Georgia law requires that the coroner be called immediately when police discover a body. During the five hour interim, the gymnasium was in use. It would seem that police already somehow "knew" the death was an "accident".

That's exactly how Bill Watson, the Lowndes County coroner, ruled Kendrick's death: as an accident. A second autopsy was done at his parents' request and expense, and that autopsy yielded different findings. Kendrick Johnson actually died of "unexplained, apparent non-accidental blunt force trauma"....CNN, quoting the medical report. Kendrick's parents were also told by the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney that Kendrick was alone in the gym when he died. Yet the surveillance taken on that day shows other students in the gym at the same time. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, L. Warren Turner, Jr., the attorney for the school, told Anderson Cooper that there were other students present in the gym. The very same attorney had previously joined the Georgia Bureau of Investigations in an unsuccessful effort to convince the community that Kendrick was alone when he died. The information is obviously conflicting, yet the lawyer does not acknowledge the problem. Rather than admit wrongdoing on the part of the school, which owes it's students better and more competent supervision, he leaves Kendrick's parents with the task of paying their own lawyer to challenge him, even though he knows that in protecting the school, he is at cross purposes with student safety, perverting justice, allowing a killer to remain at large, and sending a clear message to any would-be bullies that the school is more concerned with protecting it's public image than protecting any underage crime victims.

Anderson Cooper has as much of the footage from the day Kendrick died as he was able to get from the school. The reader should also note that law enforcement did not even peruse this video before the death was initially ruled accidental. Had Kendrick been white, would this investigation have been handled differently?

 

The Lowndes County coroner, Bill Watson, made yet another interesting comment. In addition to getting away with covering for a school where homicides go uninvestigated and covering for a police department that has agendas that are more important to the local sheriff than impartial enforcement of the law, Watson wants Anderson Cooper to redact the whole interview between himself and Cooper! Fat chance! Watson may be able to manipulate the journalists and advertisers who produce the local news where he lives, but he does not own Anderson Cooper or CNN!