Feds seize phones, emails in Kendrick Johnson’s gym mat death investigation

Kendrick Johnson’s case seems to be taking off again.

Federal marshals seized emails from a Georgia sheriff’s office, more than two years after investigators there concluded there was no foul play when a 17-year-old was found dead inside a rolled-up gym mat, reports CNN.

Kendrick Johnson case

U.S. Marshals came to Lowndes County IT offices Tuesday and Wednesday with a warrant and copied sheriff’s office emails related to the investigation into Kendrick Johnson’s death, an attorney representing the sheriff’s office told CNN.

The warrant was tied to the federal grand jury investigation into Johnson’s January 2013 death, Lowndes County Attorney Jim Elliott said. Elliott said he did not know which emails had been copied and declined to provide a copy of the warrant.

Lowndes County sheriff’s investigators concluded that Johnson got stuck while reaching for a shoe at the center of the mat in the Lowndes County High School gymnasium, and that his death was accidental. The state’s medical examiner agreed, citing “positional asphyxia” as the cause of death.

But a forensic pathologist hired by Johnson’s family determined the teen’s death was the result of a homicide, saying he found evidence of “unexplained, apparent nonaccidental blunt force trauma.”

The Department of Justice launched a federal investigation into Johnson’s death in October 2013, but authorities have been tight-lipped about what they’ve found.

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