VALDOSTA, Ga. — For the next several months, the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office will take their time to go over evidence they recently received from federal investigators in the Kendrick Johnson case.
Johnson's body was found in 2013 in a rolled-up gym mat at Lowndes County High School. Investigators ruled Johnson died of accidental asphyxiation when he got stuck in the mat while trying to retrieve a shoe, and last year the Georgia Bureau of Investigation officially closed the case.
But Johnson’s family believes he was murdered by schoolmates. Since then, they have been searching for what they believe is the truth, filing federal lawsuits and conducting independent autopsies, one of which ruled that Johnson died by "apparent non-accidental, blunt force trauma."
Now, family may get their wish to get to the bottom of what happened, after Lowndes County Sheriff Ashely Paulk said his agency officially reopened Johnson's case on March 5.
“This will be the first time that anybody will have everybody’s evidence in one place," Paulk told 11Alive on Tuesday during a phone interview.
Paulk said this has been a move the sheriff's office has been working on for a while.
"We started trying to attain all of the federal investigative documents," he said. "First letter I wrote was the second of April in 2019."
He said a few months later, that request was denied. However, Johnson's family never gave up. Paulk learned in December from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Ohio that the documents would finally be released.
"And we got them approximately two months later," he said.
He credits the family for them finally being released. Paulk said he couldn't go into details about the evidence, but he did say he's interviewed one person in the case this week.
The evidence - 17 boxes worth of printed material, hard drives, and more - came with an order from the federal judge that the documents were sealed.
Paulk said it could take his department a minimum of six months to go through everything. He plans to lead the investigation.
“I want to be able to say myself that this is exactly what we know, not what somebody told me," he said.
The office will use fresh faces to look at the case, along with some who were involved during the initial investigation. The key, Paulk said, is to not have any predisposed opinion about what happened.
“This is going to be treated just like a brand new case," he said.
Paulk said he has been in contact with the family during the process. He even met with them last week and asked them to create a prioritized list of questions that were not answered sufficiently in the case.
“I want to reiterate I’m not saying that anybody has done anything wrong in the investigation," he explained. "This is just the first opportunity that anybody’s had to have everything in one place and look at it all together.”
He said if they find contradictions, they hope they will be able to resolve them.
Through a family spokesperson, Johnson's family said they were grateful for the case being reopened and remained "cautiously optimistic" about the outcome.