VALDOSTA, Ga. — A South Georgia sheriff who reopened an investigation into the death of a teenager found inside a rolled-up gym mat at a high school said there was no evidence of a crime after reviewing the evidence.
The body of Kendrick Johnson, 17, was found at Lowndes High School in Valdosta on Jan. 11, 2013, the Valdosta Daily Times reported. Investigators with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office said that the teen died in a freak accident when he attempted to retrieve a shoe that had fallen into the upright mat, WSB-TV reported. Deputies believed Johnson became stuck inside the mat and was unable to breathe.
“We already knew that nothing was going to be done on your watch,” Jacqueline Johnson, the teen’s mother, said, according to the television station. “This is how you roll in Valdosta.”
Jaqueline Johnson said she doesn’t trust local authorities and wants federal investigators to take another look at what happened to her son here nine years ago. https://t.co/3Pce37NKOE
— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) January 27, 2022
The review was prepared by Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk, who was not in office at the time of Johnson’s death, the Daily Times reported. In the preamble of the 16-page review, Paulk wrote that he was “obligated to provide a document that would come from a person who could present the unbiased facts.”
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 charge,” the newspaper reported.
“When you look through the whole file you cannot find one thing that you would consider to be a criminal act,” Paulk told WSB.
Johnson’s parents believe the teen was murdered and that school officials have covered up the crime, the television station reported.
One of the students investigated by prosecutors was on a bus headed to a wrestling match at the same time that Kendrick Johnson went into the gym, according to Paulk’s report. Footage from cameras at the high school showed that the teen did not cross paths with either of the two other people in the federal investigation, The New York Times reported.
The death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson, who was found upside-down in a rolled-up gym mat at his Georgia high school in 2013, was an accident, according to the county sheriff, who said there was no evidence of foul play.https://t.co/4GmWg2As63
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 28, 2022
At 1:27 p.m. EST on Jan. 10, 2013, camera footage showed Kendrick Johnson walking alone into the gym, toward the bleachers, where gym mats were rolled and stored vertically, according to the newspaper. A teacher and students found his body the next morning.
Evidence in the file that Paulk examined filled 17 boxes.
“You didn’t find nothing in 17 boxes? That’s the craziest lie you could have told,” Jacqueline Johnson told WSB. “We already knew what team you were on. You are not on the team of righteousness.”
Johnson told the television station that she will continue to ask the Department of Justice to reopen its investigation.
“I am quite sure that there will still be a contingent that will believe there was foul play,” Paulk said at the review’s end. “I encourage everyone to study all the evidence in this file before forming an opinion.”
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia declined to comment and referred questions to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, which is now handling the case, the Times reported.
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