Private consultant releases new Kendrick Johnson autopsy
Published 8:40 pm Thursday, November 15, 2018
- Jacquelyn Johnson expected her son to arrive home Jan. 10 after watching a freshmen basketball game at Lowndes High School that evening. But 17-year-old Kendrick didn’t show up at the expected time and shortly after midnight, his mother filed a missing person’s report with police. A few hours later she was at the high school when she got the tragic news her son had been found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat in the old gymnasium.
VALDOSTA — A private forensic consultant out of Orlando, Fla., is disagreeing with the state autopsy and official investigation in the death of Kendrick “KJ” Johnson.
Valdosta Daily Times news partners at WALB-TV obtained and released a report from Forensic Dimensions of Orlando that had been commissioned by attorneys representing the Johnson family after they exhumed the teenagers body for a second time.
That report can be found at: https://bit.ly/2OLAvzH
The report submitted by Dr. William Anderson attributed Johnson’s death to blunt force trauma.
The body of Kendrick Johnson was found upside down in a vertically stored gym mat at Lowndes High School in January 2013. A state autopsy ruled the 17-year-old’s death accidental, and a federal review of the case ended in 2016 when the Department of Justice announced it had not found “sufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges.”
The Johnson family has maintained their son died of foul play and have filed multiple lawsuits against dozens of defendants through the years.
He was buried in Sunset Hill Cemetery, a city-owned property.
Chevene King, an Albany-based attorney representing the Johnsons, said back in January the family wants the body exhumed again for additional tests.
KJ’s body was first exhumed in June 2013 by court order because the family wanted an autopsy separate from the state’s. In this case, William R. Anderson, an Ocala, Florida-based pathologist hired by the Johnsons, said blunt-force trauma was evident. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s official autopsy claimed KJ died from accidental positional asphyxia with no sign of blunt force trauma.
In the years since the teen’s death, the Johnson family has launched various lawsuits against dozens of individuals in state and federal courts. A lawsuit filed in Lowndes County Superior Court against dozens of defendants for $100 million was dropped in March 2016. A federal investigation found no conclusive evidence of foul play. A federal lawsuit was dropped when an attorney representing Johnson’s parents failed to meet filing deadlines.
In August, the Johnsons were ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses associated with the lawsuits they filed.
Valdosta Daily Times senior reporter Terry Richards contributed to this report.
