After eight years, the investigation into Georgia teenager Kendrick Johnson’s death has been reopened by the Lowndes County Sheriff’s department.
Johnson, 17, was found up-side-down and rolled up in a mat in the Lowndes County High School gymnasium in January of 2013. His death was officially ruled an accident, but his parents believe instead that he was murdered.
According to CNN, an initial investigation concluded that Johnson fell into the mat’s center while reaching for a shoe. An autopsy determined Johnson’s cause of death to be accidental positional asphyxia. But, Johnson’s family had an independent autopsy performed, which ruled that the cause of death was “unexplained, apparent non-accidental, blunt-force trauma” to the neck.
In 2016, the Department of Justice said that there was not enough evidence to prove a crime was committed against Johnson following a two-and-a-half-year investigation.
Sheriff Ashley Paulk, who had questioned whether the incident was an accident when it first happened, came out of retirement in 2017. And in April of 2019, he requested the information obtained in the federal investigation be handed over to his office.
After initially being denied, Paulk’s office received 17 boxes of written and electronic evidence pertaining to the federal investigation.
“My plan is to see if there are any discrepancies between the reports,” Paulk said.
Some of the investigators from the original probe will be used for the reopened case, and some officials are new to the case. Paulk said the first interview took place on Monday and that the investigation could take up to six months to complete.
“It’s been eight long years,” Johnson’s mother, Jacquelyn Johnson, told the outlet. “I’m feeling hopeful.”
