The curious cases of Kendrick Johnson & Ryan Singleton Part I

The curious cases of  Kendrick Johnson & Ryan Singleton Part I
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I want to open by helping you to understand just how grim the practice of organ donation is. The first assumption leads you to believe it’s an altruistic decision—only requiring you to check a little box as you register or renew your driver’s license. Then of course if you happen to die, your organs go to a person in need.  Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that.  You don’t have to be completely dead before they begin harvesting your body. In fact all the doctor has to do is verify that you cannot pass a few rudimentary tests. (They splash ice water in your ears, check your gag reflex, poke your eyeballs with cotton swabs etc.) Said tests are brief and if you fail them, they hook you back up to the respirator to keep you breathing and your blood flowing.

This keeps the organs protected and allows them to begin cutting. This practice often takes place regardless of whether you begin breathing on your own again and in some cases, even if you are still showing brain activity. Please bear in mind that while this practice is utterly macabre, it is 100% legal. So if the legal practice of organ harvesting is morally ambiguous, how can we possibly believe the illegal markets to not be exponentially worse?

  Let’s talk about Kendrick Johnson. Introducing Kendrick can almost be read as a script considering there appears to be an almost cliché and unyielding surplus of innocent black children murdered in America these days—however  I will say that regardless of how cliché it may sound—it is, like many other of these tragedies—the truth.

   Kendrick Johnson was a 17 year old, African American athlete who dreamed of playing pro ball. He attended Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. On January 11, 2013, Kendrick Johnson was found in a rolled up wrestling mat in the gymnasium of the school—dead. Did you automatically assume foul play? I did. But how much of that is social conditioning? Are we now conditioned to believe every black child that dies under questionable circumstance is a victim of conspiracy? Maybe. So how about we try to  look at this case with no pretenses and examine the facts.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation swiftly stated that he died from positional asphyxia which means he was in— or placed in—a position that prevented him from breathing. What position or how he got into it remains a mystery. Regardless, the case was ruled an accidental death by the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office however, an independent autopsy conducted by a private pathologist in the service of Johnson's parents came to a different conclusion, finding that his death was caused by blunt force trauma.

The family was traumatized and demanded answers. They are finding that those answers—if granted at all—will be hard won. Next I want you to look at this photo:

This is a photo of Kendrick as he was found, rolled in a mat tucked neatly in a corner. What disturbed me about this is that there is no credible information available as to how he got rolled up into the mat. Also, notice how neatly he is rolled up. If for some incredibly preposterous reason he attempted to crawl into this cylindrical mat, whose opening was hardly suited for his size—the ends of the mat should be overlapping. To better understand what I mean, please take out a dollar bill and wrap it around your finger tightly and slide your finger out. It will drag several layers out and form a cone-like shape.  See what I mean? Now imagine that the mat was rolled as pictured, and then imagine him somehow wriggling into the tiny opening. All of the rings in the middle should be pushed in dramatically. That is not the case here. It seems more likely that he was wrapped up in the mat.

On October 31, 2013, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia announced that the office would open a formal review into the death of Johnson. (A full 10 months later.) It is now almost July 2015 and the investigation is still pending and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is participating in that review process. That said, the story doesn’t end here. An independent autopsy revealed a gruesome fact. All of his organs were missing. The family was furious and demanded answers while the coroner and the funeral home played an infuriating game of hot potato with the blame. They finally came to this conclusion:  Johnson's internal organs were said to have been “destroyed through natural process" and "discarded by the coroner before the body was sent back to his home town of Valdosta”.  Don’t worry, I rolled my eyes at this part as well, but try to remember we are being unbiased. They found that his body had been stuffed with newspaper and other unnamed items. The funeral home was exonerated as this is apparently an acceptable practice.

The family hired attorney Benjamin Crump and filed several inquiries and eventually filed a law suit naming a total of 38 respondents. There has yet to be any publicly available information about where his organs ended up. There was also an disproportionate amount of focus on the funeral home’s poor practices rather than what the coroner did with his organs, why they denied having removed them, and more importantly—how, why and what does “destroyed through natural process" mean exactly?

Next, let’s talk about the surveillance cameras. In November 2013 approximately 290 hours of surveillance video from over 30 cameras that covered the gym area was released. A forensic analyst (Grant Federicks) found that tapes from two cameras are missing an hour and five minutes of footage while another set is missing 2 hours and 10 minutes. To date, there has been no explanation of as to where they are. [the missing video] The family believed this to be a cover up.  Jim Elliott, the Lowndes County Attorney, stated that the allegations of a cover-up are "unfounded" and "baseless".

 This is also when a seemingly innocuous speculation came from the president of the SCLC. (Charles Steele, Jr.) Steele—a black man—and one time a president of the local NAACP made the following statement directly after: “The Johnson family’s legal counsel not been entirely truthful in their statements and that there is no cover-up in this case.”

 First, no one asked his opinion whatsoever. Second, he had literally no interaction with the people involved in this tragedy so how could he possibly know?  Also, what are they being dishonest about, and if they were, how the hell would he be privy to this information when no one else is? To make such a rigid and finite statement with no provocation is indicative of the very same cover-up that he claims doesn’t exist.  So now we have people attempting to shift public opinion by challenging the credibility of the grieving family and their legal counsel as well as the funeral home—all of which distract from some very clear facts:

1. The coroner should have simply disclosed where his organs were.

2. The coroner needs to clarify why and what “destroyed through natural process" means.

3. The video surveillance. Where are the missing hours, and why did they conveniently vanish during times that would have given this case at least a modicum of clarity?

4.Where are his shoes? Did they magically vanish?

There have been several claims from anonymous sources stating that Kendrick was dating a young white female and that this didn’t sit well with several of his peers. I can attest to this unique form of drama—having grown up in the south and almost exclusively dated white girls. I fought often, and had my life threatened more times than I can count. However let’s completely take the racial element out of this.

 If we are talking probability, it seems more likely to assume he was either playing far too rough with his classmates and it ended badly (Any mother of little boys can tell you that boys don’t know the difference between danger and recreation. I have the scars to prove it.) or he was attacked. Those involved may have had no intention to kill him—likely attempting to hurt or scare him, but they went too far. They then rolled him up, left him there, then disposed of his shoes. However this doesn’t explain why the video surveillance tapes are missing, nor does it explain where his shoes and organs went.

Again, it is now Jun 2015 and this case is still under investigation.The family has filed a suit; claiming Kendrick was bullied repeatedly by several peers and that the school board did nothing to stop this. One of the bullies had an FBI agent as a father and there has been speculation that he was involved in the cover-up—however this is only speculation from the family’s counsel. We won't know until further information is released. However it should be noted that as I said prior—The FBI is involved in the entire review process. Also, bear in mind that it is alleged in the lawsuit that Johnson was lured to the gym by an unidentified 'white female' and that it was there that Brian Bell and his brother are alleged to have assaulted Johnson. The lawsuit further alleges that the father of the boys, FBI agent Rick Bell, encouraged the boys to assault Johnson.  I wish I could give the family answers. I wish I could give them closure. All we can do is hope that justice prevails. This is not the first time a young black man was suddenly missing organs. Part 2 will cover Ryan Singleton, a young black male. Also from Georgia. Also found dead with missing organs. 

In closing I would like to pose a simple question: 
If several vital parties claim that the Johnson families claims are without warrant and baseless—then why has this investigation taken the feds so long to complete?