VALDOSTA — Allison Ericson, Valdosta Today News Director:
On Oct. 28, Lieutenant Stride Jones presented the Kendrick Johnson case to the public. Jones was a supervisor in the Johnson case and presented on behalf of the Lowndes County Sheriffs Department.
Jones’ presentation was formatted into a timeline of events which provided the dates, times, and locations of Kendrick’s moves.
“January 11, 2013 changed my life professionally and personally, especially the events to come after,” Jones said. “You have to understand the timeline of events to understand what took place with Kendrick’s death.”
On January 9, 2013 at approximately 6:30 AM, Kendrick boarded his school bus driven by his mother. He arrived at Lowndes High School and proceeded to attend his first, second, and third block classes.
Police began tracking Kendrick’s moves on the school cameras at 8:33 AM when he was first seen. At 1:00 PM a camera captured Johnson entering the old gym, this photo would later be known as the last photo of Kendrick alive.
“Kendrick enters the gym as does this student, Student A. Student A goes into the gym first. Student A goes in and he starts walking to the back right hand corner in the gym. Kendrick comes in probably a second, second and a half behind him and goes to the back left hand corner,” Jones said.”They separate, they are not together, they never speak to each other. Nobody enters the gym after Kendrick except in a few seconds, actually…18 seconds.”
The first important piece of information to the police was Johnson’s attire, a white shirt, an orange under shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. The police used this information to not only track Kendrick’s moves throughout the day, but to make sure his image remained consistent through interviews and statements. A second important piece of information is how fast Kendrick was moving in the still photographs of him entering the gym.
” If you look at the video he is not running, but he is walking fast. That was the first key to us, and if you notice his hair is kind of parted on the side, like somebody might be walking fast,” Jones said. “That was the first thing, why is he walking fast? Is he trying to get away from somebody or something? Is he trying to get to something?”
The police were told that Johnson used to play on the LHS football team, after some things happened he left the team. The coaches informed Johnson he could return to the team once his grades were higher and his attendance was satisfactory. This lead police to believe he was walking briskly because he did not want to arrive late to his weight lifting class in the athletic field house.
Attendance records showed that Kendrick never arrived to his fourth block class.
Police found out that the varsity basketball team was practicing in the old gym on January 10 at 3:30 PM. Later, at 4:00 PM the winter color guard began practice in the old gym. These students were interviewed with no reports of ever hearing or seeing Kendrick in the gym.
Kendrick’s mother reported him missing at midnight.
On January 11, Kendrick Johnson was found and reported dead. Philip Pieplow, LHS athletic trainer reported finding Johnson in a rolled up mat against the wall in the left hand corner of the gym. Pieplow was teaching a class when students found Johnson’s body.
“There are 20 something of them, the mat that the kid was inside of was in the very back and towards the right. He starts pulling mats down from the top, pulling them to the floor. While he’s pulling down mats one of the things that falls off is a yellow folder and some other school books. He gets to the mat that the child is in and he pulls it over, when he pulls it down Kendrick Johnson slides out the other side of it, partially slides out,” Jones said.
There were five items at the site of Kendrick’s death that were extremely valuable to the case. These items included, a pair of size 9.5, Adidas, black and white shoes, blood spatter on the wall, a bloody tissue in the girls bathroom, a Nike shoe, and a cellular phone.
“In this area you see boxed in…is what we call our crime scene. People ask, ‘why do you call it a crime scene? You said it was not a crime.’ On January 11, what we knew was we had a deceased child at a high school and that’s not natural, you dog-gone right we approached it like a crime scene,” Jones said.
Johnson’s arm was found draped over one of the black and white shoes, the other one was found a few feet from the mat.
There was dried blood spatter on the wall 40 ft. away from the mat where Johnson was found, the blood was tested and was not a match.
“It’s not Kendrick’s blood, now we do not know whose blood it is. Well a lot of people ask ‘why didn’t you test everyone at the school?’ Well number one, we don’t have a legal basis, number two, you’re talking about testing 3,000 people,” Jones said.
Investigators found a bloody tissue in the girls restroom located outside of the gym, the blood was tested and was not a match.The Nike shoe appeared to have blood spatter on it, the shoe was tested and the spatter was paint.
“We have the bloody tissue in the girls bathroom, we send it off. During the interviews we had a student, Student B say, ‘Hey I know about the bloody tissue, that’s my blood.’ During the color guard practice with the poles she got hit in the nose, she went to the bathroom and cleaned herself up,” Jones said. “We didn’t stop there, we sent it off for DNA testing, then we had the Nike shoe, we sent that off and like I told you before, that is not blood on the shoe. The stains were negative for blood.”
The cellular phone found in Kendrick’s pocket had no recorded activity since December 27. Johnson was using the phone to listen to music and connect to the school’s WiFi throughout the day.
“January 14, Monday, Dr. Craft forms an autopsy at the Central South Georgia crime lab in Macon, they are GBI, not associated with us in anyway. They have nothing to do with our agency, they just do the autopsies for the state medical examiners office,” Jones said. “What Dr. Craft told us was from the initial autopsy, she said ‘I’m not sure at this point what he died from, but I can tell you what he didn’t die from, he had not been beaten, he had not been stabbed, he had not be shot, he had not been sexually assaulted or anything such as that.'”
The police began interviewing students back to back when they finally received an important statement from Student C.
“Me and Kendrick Johnson ‘KJ’ had third block gym together in coach Davis’ class. At the beginning of class I would always wait for coach to call roll then I’d go get me and Kendrick’s basketball shoes. I would tilt the mats over and get the shoes from the bottom, I never got into a mat,” Student C said.
The same detective received a similar statement from Student D. Student D mentioned knowing about the shoes and that he shared them with Student C. Another student, Student E shares his statement about the shoes and reported that he had never worn the shoes but had seen them throw the shoes into the mat and retrieve them on several occasions.
The size 9.5, Adidas, black and white tennis shoes had belonged to Kendrick, he had received them from his eighth grade basketball coach at Lowndes Middle School.
“This is actually the shoe that was under Kendrick and people say ‘There is no blood on the shoe,’ yeah there is…on the back line that’s blood, there is blood on the shoe laces…so there is blood on the shoe,” Jones said.
Police officials and the GBI reported Johnson’s cause of death as asphyxiation.
“These mats are six ft. high, Kendrick is 5’10 5’11 so the argument always comes up or people always present to us, if hes 5’11 and that mat is six ft.,why did he not stretch out the top? “If he stretched his toes out enough, he could, you’re absolutely right,” Jones said. “If a person is alive they could, however once Kendrick’s body passed away it is no longer a stiff upright body, it is now limp. When your body dies it becomes limp, gravity takes over and everything goes to the lowest point, that’s what happened to Kendrick.”
Officials believe that before Christmas break students were asked to roll up the mats, pushing the mat with the black and white shoes to the back. Johnson climbed on top of the mats to retrieve the shoes, fell into the mat, asphyxiated, and eventually died. The case was closed in May 2013, after police reported there was no foul play in the death of Kendrick Johnson.
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