North Carolina Family Wants Feds to Investigate Black Teen’s Hanging Death

By Carla Murphy Dec 12, 2014

The family of Lennon Lacy, a black 17-year-old found hanging from a swing set in a North Carolina trailer park in August, wants a federal inquiry into his death. Local Bladenboro authorities ruled the high school football player’s death a suicide due to depression and closed the case within five days. Family members say the investigation happened too quickly. The local NAACP "has been careful to not call the teen’s death a lynching," the ABC affiliate reports. "However, it’s raising the possibility that Lennon may have been a victim of ongoing racial tensions from whites in his community." 

A separate examination of Lacy by a pathologist hired by the family and the NAACP "found a number of inexplicable oversights," according to IBT:

Lacy’s hands were not bagged to protect them from contamination, no photographs were taken by police at the scene and the shoes found on Lacy’s feet did not match the ones his family had last seen him wearing and were a size and a half too small. The shoes found on Lacy’s body were removed from the body bag sometime between when the body was placed inside it and when it was delivered to the state medical examiner. Additionally, Daily Kos reports that different agencies on site argued over evidence being taken and the need for an autopsy.

Most notably, though, Roberts’ examination found that given Lacy’s height, weight and items at the scene where his body was found, it would have been virtually impossible for him to hang himself.

There will be a march this Saturday in Bladenboro, N.C., to honor Lacy and "bring awareness to the case." Read more about it on the Guardian and IBT.