Jenifer Lewis is calling on Congress to open an investigation into the mysterious death of Kendrick Johnson.
After narrating and producing Finding Kendrick Johnson, the famed actress wants a new sense of urgency to go into finding out what really happened to Johnson.
On January 11th, 2013, Johnson, a Black teenager, was found rolled up in a gym mat in his high school. According to the autopsy report, Johnson’s death was ruled as accidental, although his family has doubts.
A second autopsy was conducted which concluded that Johnson had died from blunt force trauma. The film Finding Kendrick Johnson is described to be a “product of a 4-year undercover investigation into the facts of this case and this new documentary hopes to shed light on one of the most important American stories of our time. So what really happened to KJ?”
During a recent appearance on TMZ Live, Lewis went to speak on the film. “This is the most important film I’ve ever worked on. What this family has gone through is unspeakable but we must speak it so the public knows the truth.”
She added, “You know how much evidence the FBI has to have to storm somebody’s house with guns AK-47s out? And then when they got in there and saw that it was an FBI agent, it was just pushed under the rug, just pushed under the rug. Another Black kid. So what?”
In 2016, the Department of Justice released a statement after their investigation. “After extensive investigation into this tragic event, federal investigators determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone or some group of people willfully violated Kendrick Johnson’s civil rights or committed any other prosecutable federal crime. Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed without the filing of federal criminal charges.”
The case was reopened by Ashely Paulk, Sheriff of Lowndes County in 2017. However, a lot of her efforts were denied to look more thoroughly into it by Federal investigators. She did reveal that a 2020 visit to Johnson’s residence resulted in the release of 17 boxes of evidence from the federal investigation.