Hundreds of hours of surveillance video of the high school where Kendrick Johnson mysteriously died have only served to raise more questions, reports show.
Benjamin Crump, the family’s attorney, says they are "troubled" by a number of issues, including the lack of time-stamps on the video, but they are most worried about the video of the gymnasium where their son was found dead, rolled up inside of a gym mat, MSNBC reports.
"Out of the 36 cameras—that’s 36 angles—all of them are vivid and clear, except the one that is pointed to the wrestling mats, that corner where Kendrick was found dead," Crump told the Rev. Al Sharpton on Friday’s PoliticsNation. "That is the only one that is blurry, that is the only one that is distorted."
But in an interview with NBC News, Lt. Stryde Jones of the Valdosta, Ga., sheriff’s office explained that the camera footage is blurry because it may have been damaged by a ball at some point. Further, he explained that there is no video of Johnson’s body going inside the mat because the device is motion activated and the mat was beyond its range.
Law enforcement officials in the Georgia town where Johnson was found dead have always contended that the death was accidental. But his parents were suspicious from the start, raising doubts that the athletic Johnson could have died that way. An autopsy report by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations ruled that he suffocated inside a gym mat after he fell into it while retrieving a shoe.
But Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson slammed the initial investigation, saying he was not notified about it until about 4 p.m., more than six hours after the body was discovered.
"It just goes to show more disrespect to my family, what the sheriff’s department have done to us," Kendrick’s father, Kenneth, said on Friday’s PoliticsNation. "They treated Kendrick like he wasn’t even human."
