Kendrick Johnson, a 17-year-old Black teenager was found head first with his feet sticking out in a rolled-up gym mat in the gymnasium of Lowndes High school in Valdosta, Georgia. His death was originally ruled a freak accident or something known as ‘positional asphyxia.’ It was believed that he became stuck after trying to retrieve a lost shoe. However, with new information and a new autopsy, it is now believed to have been from blunt force trauma towards the right side of his neck or his carotid artery. 

Blood was found pooled around the shoe Kendrick was trying to retrieve in the mat as well as it was around the inside of the mat that his body was found in. As said by federal investigators, the death was proven to not be of a “manner of accident” compared to the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office closing the case as merely an accident. Could this be a covered-up crime by the police and school officials in order to hide the truth away from the people who want answers and to Kendrick’s family? But why and who would do such a thing?

With Kendrick’s case, it truly was a weird and mysterious one. Because his case was closed for being merely an accident, the evidence proved that it may have not simply been an accident. During the time before his death, Kendrick was seen on the CCTV of his high school walking around the corridors and halls of the school and later entering the gym with a couple of people, practicing his basketball and shooting hoops a couple of times. What was even weirder about this was that after his death, almost 3 hours of the video recording was removed deliberately by someone.

Almost all the students in the school have claimed that they didn’t see anything or know what happened at all. What was even skeptical about the student’s claim was that 2 teens refused to be interrogated by the police and have denied involvement in the murder. Hmm, something smells fishy, don’t you think so? What was also strange was that when Kendrick’s body was taken to a funeral home for investigation, his organs from his head to his pelvis area were missing and taken out stuffed with newspaper. Could someone have taken his organs and sold them on the black market to make money? From what I know, selling organs on the black market can range from your kidney being around $200,00 to your heart being around $119,000, etc. since you get the idea of how much you can make. If you can harvest all of the organs in your body successfully, then the total price can sum up to about $1M+ of cash.

Theoretically speaking, someone must’ve shoved Kendrick’s body forcibly into the mat because his shoulder was way too big to fit into the mat seeing that the hole of the mat was 6 feet tall measuring 14 inches, compared to his shoulders being a width of 19 inches for a 5′ 10″ person. Considering the other possibilities, if Kendrick suffered a blunt force trauma to his neck, he could’ve perhaps when reaching for his shoe that fell in the mat had pressed his shoulders very harshly and continuously to his neck when reaching, which caused his death “accidentally,” but at the same time, it could’ve not been likely, but maybe?

Kendrick Johnson’s death could’ve been due to the encouragement of racial animus making him a target thus his death, but this much is not known as to why it had to be him. Though it was also stated that Kendrick himself could’ve trapped himself and suffocated plus the trauma to his neck when reaching for his shoes, there was an easier method to reach for his shoes. He could’ve just lifted the mat and flipped it over to retrieve them right? So. . . why all the trouble just to go in the mat and reach for it causing suffocation + death?

It all just doesn’t make sense, as there are many questions left unanswered. Why were his organs taken out and replaced with newspaper? Why was the video recording missing 3 hours? Who could have done it? Who could’ve erased the evidence needed to solve the case? Is it really an accident, since the evidence tells a different story? Why are people so suspicious and deny the statement given to them? If it was a murder, was it done by one or multiple people? Did they/it holds a grudge against Kendrick at all for the murder/accident and why? There are many other people to target, but why Kendrick? Why was there no evidence about fingerprints/footprints or any possible murder weapon being found on the crime scene?

As to the many questions and more left unanswered, hopefully, we can all be satisfied and find answers to all of them with the case of Kendrick Johnson being reopened this year of 2021 by Georgia’s Lowndes Sheriff officer Ashley Paulk for the people.