Friday, March 29, 2024

Sheriff Offers $500K of Own Money As Reward in Kendrick Johnson Death Case

Kendrick Johnson (High School - basketball) - Wikimedia Commons
Kendrick Johnson (High School – basketball) – Wikimedia Commons

*The Valdosta County Sheriff is offering half a million dollars of his own money as a reward for information leading to the arrest in the curious death case of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson.

We previously reported that Kendrick was a member of the wrestling team at Lowndes High School in Valdosta, in southern Georgia. Several students found him upside down in a rolled-up mat on Jan. 11, 2013. Authorities ruled Kendrick’s death accidental, “theorizing he had fallen into the opening at the center of the mat and suffocated,” PEOPLE writes.  

Kendrick’s parents conducted an independent autopsy which determined the teenager was indeed the victim of foul play.

“I’m going to fight this fight because, at the end of the day, that’s my child that’s in the grave,” Kendrick’s mother, Jacquelyn, told PEOPLE in October.

READ MORE: Kendrick Johnson’s Death Was ‘An Accident’ – So Says Sheriff As Second Investigation Closes

Last week, Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk, who was not in office at the time of Kendrick’s death, issued a 16-page report stating there was no evidence linking anyone else to the high schooler’s death, the New York Times reported. He described it as a “weird accident.”

Kendrick’s parents do not agree with the results of his latest findings, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

On Monday, Paulk announced he was putting his own money up as a reward in an effort to dispel all the rumors and accusations surrounding the case. 

“After the release of my synopsis of the federal files on the Kendrick Johnson case, his parents have called me a liar and continue to state that Kendrick was murdered,” he wrote, according to the paper.

“Because of these statements, I am personally — with my own funds — offering a reward of one-half million dollars … to anyone who comes forward with information that results in the arrest and conviction of a person for the alleged murder of Kendrick Johnson at Lowndes County High School.”

Paulk reopened the case last year and poured through 17 boxes of evidence obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice. 

“It took 14 months to go through it,” Paulk told Inside Edition Digital. “In all the evidence we’ve seen, there is nothing to show that anybody murdered Kendrick Johnson right now. People still have doubts and the Johnsons still have doubts, and they publicly called me a liar. So, I said put your money where your mouth is.”

Johnson’s parents, who believe their son was killed, want federal investigators to take a second look at the case.

“You didn’t find nothing in 17 boxes? That’s the craziest lie you could have told. We already knew what team you were on. You are not on the team of righteousness,” Kendrick’s mother told WSB-TV.

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