ESPN — Florida State has withdrawn a scholarship offer to Lowndes High School linebacker Brian Bell, who was named in a wrongful death civil suit involving a classmate who was found dead in the school in 2013.
Bell, who committed to the Seminoles after receiving a scholarship offer in January 2014, won’t sign with another school on Wednesday, according to his attorney, Brice Ladson of Savannah.
“Certainly, we hope he will sign with someone before the process is over,” Ladson said. “There is no one else that we can speak of at this time.”
Last month, the parents of Kendrick Johnson filed a $100 million lawsuit against 38 defendants, including Bell, his brother and their father, Richard Bell, an FBI agent. Johnson, 17, was found dead inside a rolled-up gym mat in the Lowndes County High gym on Jan. 10, 2013.
Brian Bell and his brother have not been charged with a crime.
The Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office ruled Johnson’s death a freak accident, saying he fell into the upright mat while trying to retrieve a tennis shoe and suffocated. An autopsy conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed the sheriff’s department’s cause of death.
Over the past two years, Johnson’s parents and their attorney, Benjamin Crump of Tallahassee, have alleged that he was murdered. They had Johnson’s body exhumed to conduct an independent autopsy, and a private pathologist concluded that he died of blunt force trauma to the neck. The pathologist also discovered that Johnson’s organs had been removed and his body was stuffed with newspapers.
The civil suit alleges that after Richard Bell encouraged his sons to attack Johnson, a female classmate lured him into the gym, where the two brothers fatally beat him and placed his body in the gym mat.
The civil suit, filed in DeKalb County Superior Court on Jan. 12 on behalf of Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, also accused several officials from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Valdosta Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department and Lowndes County School District of conspiring to cover up Kendrick Johnson’s murder.
U.S. Attorney Michael Moore opened a federal investigation into the case, which remains open more than a year later.
“The absurdity of this situation is just hard to overstate,” Ladson said. “This young man did nothing. There is no possibility he had anything to do with the tragic death of this young man. Yet, [the Johnson] family has not accepted that and believes someone killed him. They decided to pick on this young man. It’s just a real tragedy — all the way around.”
The family had previously filed civil suits against the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, Lowndes County School District and the funeral home that handled their son’s remains.
In September, Richard Bell and his wife, Karen, filed a $5 million defamation suit against Ebony Magazine and Frederic Rosen, a freelance writer, who wrote a series of articles entitled “Who Killed Kendrick Johnson.”
Ladson said Bell, his parents and a group of supporters from Valdosta met with FSU president John Thrasher and other university officials in Tallahassee last week.
Lowndes County High coach Randy McPherson released a statement Wednesday morning: “Last Wednesday morning Coach Jimbo Fisher told me that the FSU Athletic Director and the President would not let him give Brian Bell a scholarship. We went to meet with the FSU President the next day. The next morning, Jimbo called me and told me that they still were not going to let him give Brian a scholarship.”
McPherson didn’t immediately return a phone call on Wednesday.
Fisher declined comment when asked about Bell’s situation on Wednesday. An FSU spokesman didn’t immediately respond to email.
“This young man’s potential football career has been endangered,” Ladson said. “Obviously, by a situation from beyond his control, in which he’s completely innocent.”
Bell, 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds, was ranked the No. 28 outside linebacker in the country and the No. 49 prospect in Georgia by ESPN RecruitingNation. He also had scholarship offers from Cincinnati and Louisville, and was being recruited by Clemson and Georgia Tech before he committed to FSU.
Mark Schlabach, ESPN
