The Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson

Murder by nature

Send us a Text Message.

Kendrick Johnson was born on October 10, 1995, he lived with his family in Valdosta, Georgia, and attended Lowndes High School. His family and friends described him as a sweet and quiet boy. He was a three-sport athlete and dreamed of playing professional football.

But those dreams were cut short when his body was found by students entering the gymnasium rolled up on a standing gym mat. His sneakers were shoved behind his knees. But investigators quickly closed their case on the theory that Johnson had fallen into the mat while reaching for one of his sneakers.

The investigation

On January 11, 2013, the body of Kendrick Johnson was discovered in the gymnasium of Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia, headfirst in the center of a vertical rolled-up wrestling mat. The body was discovered by fellow 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 investigators.

Authorities hypothesized that Johnson had fallen into the mat while looking for a shoe and died after being unable to get out. Three students at Lowndes High School 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." The mat in which Johnson was found was around six feet tall. The mat left a 14-inch hole in diameter in the center when rolled up. Johnson’s shoulders measured 19 across and were five feet, ten inches tall. It seemed possible that if Kendrick was trying to squeeze into the center of the mat, he could have scrunched his shoulders together to make himself narrower. But his parents would later maintain that his size versus the size of the mat alone was enough to debunk the investigators’ case. Almost a full day had passed until Johnson had been discovered. As he was upside down, blood would have rushed to Johnson’s head, and he eventually would have begun to bleed from his facial orifices. One of the most baffling mysteries of this case: the black and white gym shoe that lay on the ground below Kendrick Johnson, the one he was presumed to be reaching for, was lying on top of a pool of blood, but there was no blood on the shoe itself. A hoodie and a pair of orange and black gym shoes were also found lying on the gym floor, as well as traces of blood on the wall nearby. Investigators tested the blood, revealing that it did not belong to Kendrick Johnson they stated that a girl had an incident in the gym due to the blood that was found and that the blood had likely been there for a long time. Even with the clothes found in the gym and the crime scene, they decided not to take the items into evidence.

Support the Show.