Two days after an Army veteran turned himself into Pennsylvania authorities for a DUI related warrant, he died in police custody. Now, more than one year later, his family is still searching for answers surrounding the mysterious details of his death.
According to a report from officers at York County Prison, 41-year-old Everett Palmer Jr. had to be restrained after he “became agitated and began hitting his head against the inside of his cell door.” But, by the time he was taken to the prison medical clinic, he had become unresponsive. Palmer was transported to York Hospital on April 9, 2018, where he was pronounced dead at 5:46 a.m.
While the coroner’s report concludes “complications following an excited state, associated with methamphetamine toxicity, during physical restraint,” and possible sickle cell complications as Palmer’s cause of death, the report doesn’t explain how methamphetamines could have been detected in Everett’s system after he spent two full days in police custody.
Palmer’s mother doesn’t believe the authorities told the truth.
“My son was a perfectly healthy man, and my son is not going to bang his head on a cell,” Rose Palmer told Spectrum News NY1. “My son was not a troublemaker, not at all, he was a very gentle, kind man.”
To add to the family’s suspicions, when the Army vet’s remains were returned to the family, his body was badly bruised, and organs including his brain, heart, and throat were all missing.
“When we reached out to find out what happened to his organs, they initially lied,” Palmer’s brother Dwayne Palmer told NY1. “They directed us back to our funeral director and told us that we need to confer with them because they probably took the organs.”
The family believes these organs were removed to cover up the true cause of death and they’ve hired civil rights attorney Lee Merritt to help investigate.
“So much mystery and unanswered questions in a way that violates every policy and procedure that state has,” Merritt told the Washington Post. “It’s not uncommon to remove body parts in an autopsy in order to perform a test. The only thing that’s highly uncommon is to not know where they are.”
Dwayne Palmer is demanding answers and wants his brother’s death to be ruled a homicide. The Palmer family has put in a Freedom of Information Act request for any video recordings from the York County Prison while Palmer was in their custody, CNN reports.
“It’s been over a year and we want some answers. He was delivered back to us without organs. We want closure,” Dwayne Palmer said. “If something criminal happened, and I believe something criminal did happen, we want the people that were involved in that to be held accountable.”
The family has started a #Justice4Everett Facebook page to keep his legacy alive.
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