BREAKING: The Murderers Of #KendrickJohnson Break Their Silence [LIVE FACT-CHECKING]
Fact #1: Branden Bell had blood on his sleeve from #KendrickJohnson on his white jacket. The surveillance video at Lowndes County High School caught him with the blood on his coat, then with the coat conspicuously off, having disappeared.
Fact #2: Kendrick Johnson had abrasions on some of his fingertips, indicating a sort of struggle that took place before he was found in the wrestling mat. There were also abrasions on his head, and string that looks to be tied around a leg. 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. [TW: GRAPHIC CONTENT]
Fact #3: An independent autopsy confirmed that Johnson died of blunt force trauma, such as from a head injury. After the opinion of the private pathologist was released, Johnson’s family stated that they believed Johnson had been killed.[5] The family retained the services of attorney Benjamin Crump.[7] 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.[4] The Federal Bureau of Investigation is participating in that review process.
Fact #4: The surveillance videos from the time of the incident do not have time codes, so they are essentially useless in identifying when certain events transpired.
Kendrick Johnson’s family waited months for hundreds of hours of surveillance video, hoping it would answer their questions. It raised only others.
Rather than showing how their 17-year-old son’s body ended up in a school gym mat in January, the four cameras inside the Valdosta, Georgia, gymnasium showed only a few collective seconds of Johnson, jogging. The camera fixed on the gym mats was blurry.
Compounding the family’s suspicions was the nature of the gym videos. They’re jumpy, with students intermittently appearing and vanishing, and they bear no obvious timestamps.
The Johnsons’ attorneys were not shy in stating their suspicion that someone could have tampered with the videos.
“They know their child did not climb into a wrestling mat, get stuck and die. Where is that video?” Benjamin Crump asked.
Attorney Chevene King questioned why time codes weren’t shown in the videos.
“We don’t have any time code with which to synchronize the events that are shown in the video. … Either the cameras did this on their own or a human being interacted to make these cameras do these things,” King said.
More updates will be shared throughout the evening.
