A Mississippi girl has, eventually, found the whereabouts of her son, who mysteriously disappeared in March 2023.
To her shock, it has come to gentle that the 37-year-old was struck and killed by a Jackson police officer’s automotive, and his stays have been laid to relaxation in grave No. 672 on the Hinds County Jail’s penal farm.
When she arrived at his grave this month, Bettersten Wade stated, “I’m so sorry this occurred to you. However Mama didn’t know. Mama didn’t know,” as NBC reported in a latest exposé.
Wade had filed a lacking individual report with the identical police division the place the one who took the lifetime of her son, Dexter Wade, labored.
Regardless of members of the pressure having the details about her son’s dying, she was stored in the dead of night for 172 days concerning the grim fact: her son’s life was taken by certainly one of their very own, and he was quietly interred in a plot situated at the back of the detention facility.
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“They’d me on the lookout for him all that point, they usually knew who he was,” the mom instructed NBC Information.
Dexter suffered from bipolar dysfunction and schizophrenia and was killed on March 5.
When Bettersten Wade referred to as about her son being lacking, police stated nobody had been capable of finding him.
That was not the reality.
The Jackson Police Division was conscious {that a} Jackson police officer had fatally struck Dexter whereas he crossed a close-by interstate freeway.
An off-duty corporal hit Dexter and referred to as in to report the accident. Police didn’t give the officer a sobriety take a look at nor examine if he was below the affect of any narcotics or alcohol. He was additionally not cited for violating any site visitors legal guidelines.
In accordance with police data, Dexter harm his head after being hit. He additionally sustained different accidents to his physique. A toxicology report revealed he was below the affect, having PCP and methamphetamine in his system. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as a suggestion that the medication had something to do with him being hit.
Police data dominated the dying unintentional.
Initially, when a consultant from the Hinds County coroner’s workplace arrived on the scene, they couldn’t discover any identification on Dexter. Nonetheless, a prescription bottle in his pocket had his identify on it.
Three days later, on March 8, investigator LaGrand Elliott contacted the medical facility holding Dexter’s prescription data and obtained his mom’s identify as the following of kin. Elliott left a voicemail after getting her quantity, though Wade claims she didn’t obtain the decision.
On the next day, the state crime lab confirmed Dexter Wade’s id by way of fingerprint matching. Subsequently, Elliott handed his info, alongside together with his mom’s contact info, to the Jackson Police Division’s accident investigation squad.
“As soon as we get that info, I flip it over to police as a result of it’s their jurisdiction in order that they’ll do the correct dying notification,” Elliott stated to NBC.
Nonetheless, they by no means notified Bettersten Wade of her son’s dying and didn’t inform her that her son was useless when she referred to as the JPD on March 14 to report him lacking. Actually, when Elliott adopted up with the division about getting in contact with the emergency contact, they instructed him she couldn’t be discovered.
“No kin has been situated as of but,” the investigator wrote in his notes on the case.
On March 30, one other name was positioned, and the division reported no adjustments. The next day, the coroner’s workplace sought approval from the Hinds County Board of Supervisors to put Dexter to relaxation in a pauper’s subject on the Hinds County penal farm, the place the mom was taken by the sheriff seven months after final seeing her son.
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Elliott stored calling the division, however no progress was made till a brand new investigator took the case and referred to as Bettersten on Aug. 13 to let her know she can be the purpose individual for her case after which, on Aug. 24, referred to as to inform her what had occurred to her son.
4 years prior, on January 13, 2019, whereas Jackson Cops have been conducting a seek for the assassin of Reverend Anthony Longino, they encountered a 62-year-old man, George Robinson, who had no connection to the pastor’s homicide at New Bethany Missionary Baptist Church, in keeping with Mississippi Immediately.
Witnesses recounted seeing officers forcibly take away Robinson, Bettersten’s brother, from his car, slamming him and hitting him with flashlights. Robinson, who was nonetheless within the means of recovering from a stroke he had suffered lower than a month earlier, shortly earlier than Christmas, succumbed to a subdural hemorrhage on the College of Mississippi Medical Middle that night.
Costs towards solely certainly one of three officers concerned would stick.
In August 2022, a jury convicted Anthony Fox of negligent manslaughter in reference to Robinson’s dying. Hinds County Circuit Choose Adrienne Wooten sentenced Fox to twenty years, with 15 years suspended, leading to a complete of 5 years of imprisonment.
Nonetheless, on July 10, 2023, Mississippi Lawyer Common Lynn Fitch petitioned a state appeals courtroom to overturn Fox’s sentence. In accordance with Fitch’s submitting, Robinson, who was 62, had preexisting well being points and was on medicine, skilled a seizure and, two days later, handed away as a consequence of a subdural hematoma. Fitch argued that the conviction shouldn’t be upheld.
All through the summer season, Bettersten had been taking to social media and asking folks to assist her discover her son, however to no avail, however with the final name, the mother stated, “I knew he was useless.”
Bettersten paid a $250 charge to the coroner’s workplace and is now capable of declare Dexter’s physique. She’s now engaged on elevating funds to have her son exhumed and laid to relaxation in a correct grave.
The Jackson Police Division responded to reporters’ inquiries concerning the case this week. Jackson Police Director of Communications Melissa Religion Payne instructed native station WLBT: “Via collaborative efforts, they have been capable of shut the lacking individual’s case, by figuring out Dexter Wade because the pedestrian who was killed. Whereas it is a very tragic and unlucky accident, our investigation discovered no malicious intent by any Jackson police workers.”
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