In August in North Carolina, 17-year-old Black teen, Lennon Lacy was found hanging by his neck from a swing set in a trailer park. The local police ruled his death a suicide, but his parents, Claudia Lacy and Larry Walton find the circumstances surrounding his death suspicious and believe he was murdered.
Lacy’s parents are now receiving support from the NAACP’s North Carolina chapter to get answers about their son’s death, reports The Root.
Al McSurely, an attorney working with the family and the NAACP to determine who may have killed Lacy, told The Root that they “have a rough idea of who some of those people might be.”
“What we’re trying to decide now, after talking to several witnesses who have come forward to us, is how we’re going to play that with the DA,” McSurely added. “It’s not like Ferguson or Trayvon’s case in the sense that here, we don’t know who shot him. In this case, somebody strangled him and took his body over there and … hung him up there in the middle of the night.”
The family is planning to take the case to the FBI or U.S. Department of Justice if they must.
When Lacy’s autopsy results were released late last week by the chief medical examiner they supported a suicide, but his parents continue to question the findings because of perceived “red flags” like the mention of their son having attended a funeral the day before his death and being “depressed over the recent death of his uncle.” The family’s lawyers insist details like these are not relevant. Also in question are the shoes Lacy was wearing at the time of his death. His family insists they were more than one size too small and not the ones he was said to be wearing on the day he died.
As his family and their attorneys continue their search for answers, the questions surrounding Lacy’s death have begun to receive more media attention, although at this point no suspects have been identified.