dailyunsolvedmysteries:Kendrick JohnsonJohnson was found headfirst in the center of a vertical rolle
dailyunsolvedmysteries:Kendrick JohnsonJohnson was found headfirst in the center of a vertical rolled-up wrestling mat, in his high school gym, on January 11, 2013. His body was discovered by students who had climbed up to the top of a cluster of mats, each of which stood nearly six feet tall and three feet wide. An autopsy by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) stated that Johnson had died from positional asphyxia,] and the case was ruled an accidental death by the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.They hypothesized that Johnson had fallen into the mat while looking for a shoe and died after being unable to get out. Three students told investigators that it was common for some students to store their shoes behind or under the rolled up mats. Johnson was not wearing shoes when he was found. A student at the school said that he shared a pair of Adidas shoes with Johnson, and that after gym class Johnson would always “go to the mats, jump up and toss the shoes inside the middle of the hole.”Lt. Stryde Jones, who headed up the investigation for the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office stated: “We never had credible information that indicated this was anything other than an accident.” Johnson’s family questioned this hypothesis. Unsatisfied with the result of the investigation, Johnson’s family hired an independent autopsy conducted by William R. Anderson with Forensic Dimensions in Heathrow, Florida on June 15. Anderson claimed that his findings indicated traces of blunt force trauma to the right neck and soft tissues, and suggested the death was not accidental.In November 2013, 290 hours of surveillance tape from 35 cameras that covered the gym area was released to CNN following a court request. A forensic analyst enlisted by CNN found that tapes from two cameras are missing an hour and five minutes of footage, while another set was missing two hours and ten minutes of footage. Some of the apparent lapses in coverage were found to result from camera systems that were not synchronized with one another. Time stamps between some separate camera systems differed by as much as 20 minutes for the same time period, giving the impression of a gap for portions of the footage where no gap existed. Other missing footage was the result of the camera’s motion-activated function not being triggered. Camera systems were motion-activated, using a change in light pixels to turn recordings on and off. The area where Johnson’s body was discovered, where the gym mats were stored, was outside the range of all of the surveillance cameras.Attorneys for the Johnson family expressed fears that the camera footage was edited as part of a cover-up. However, analysis of the camera systems by the Valdosta Daily Times purported to explain the anomalies, casting doubt on the theory of a cover-up. The president of the Valdosta-Lowndes County chapter of the SCLC and the former lead investigator for that chapter have stated that they believe the attorneys for the Johnsons have “not been entirely truthful in their statements” and that there was no cover-up in this case.source -- source link