( 4UMF NEWS ) Chavis Carter’s Autopsy Back:
Chavis Carter’s family hasn’t accepted the official explanation for his death: that he was on meth when he fatally shot himself while his hands were cuffed behind him in the backseat of a patrol car in Arkansas.
The family portrays the 21-year-old as a bright, young man who aspired to be a veterinarian, who liked shopping for sneakers and playing basketball. As questions swirl about how and why Carter died, his family also has been demanding more answers from authorities.
“If he did it, I want to know how it happened,” his grandmother, Anne Winters Carter, said in an interview. “And if he didn’t do it, then we want justice.”
Jonesboro, Ark., police have faced criticism because they say officers searched Carter twice but didn’t find a gun before they noticed him slumped over and bleeding in the back of a patrol car July 28.
Questions about race have cropped up too, because Carter was black and police said the two officers who stopped the truck he was in are white, as were the other people in the vehicle.
The local branch of the NAACP has called for a thorough investigation, and the FBI has said it’s monitoring the case. Carter’s grandmother and his mom, Teresa Carter, are also working with a high-profile legal firm that represented O.J. Simpson.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is supposed to weigh in on the case Wednesday in Memphis before leading the family in the latest prayer vigil in Jonesboro.
Some of the family’s supporters marched through Jonesboro on Tuesday. One woman had a sign that read, “Stop the lies!! No suicide.” That march came a day after a candlelight vigil was held for Carter in Memphis and police released an autopsy report from the Arkansas state crime lab that deemed his death a suicide.
