Carmen Day, whose 25-year-old son, Jelani, was found dead under mysterious circumstances earlier this year, is pleading with the FBI to help her understand what happened to her boy. “I’m asking you. I’m imploring you. I’m begging you. I need to know what happened to my son,” she said last week.
Carmen was joined by Reverend Jesse Jackson and civil rights attorney Ben Crump when she spoke at the Rainbow Push Coalition’s headquarters in Chicago, where she also criticized the Puru, Illinois Police Department, who she feels “didn’t do enough to help find her son.”
“I need the FBI to come in and take over…They need to make Jelani a priority,” she expressed with great emotion. Back in October, it was reported that the Illinois State University graduate student’s cause of death was drowning. “There was no evidence of any [pre-death] injury, such as manual strangulation, an assault or altercation, sharp, blunt, or gunshot injury, infection, tumor, natural disease, congenital abnormality, or significant drug intoxication,” LaSalle County Coroner Richard Ploch has said.
As reported by Complex, the exact manner of Jelani’s death remains unknown. Carmen’s mother previously commented that she feels a “narrative that my son did something to himself” has been pushed based on the information being made available by authorities involved with the case.
“We are asking the FBI to make this young, Black man named Jelani Day a priority just like they did the young white woman, Gabby Petito, because his life matters just like hers,” Crump said, referring to the headline-grabbing case regarding the YouTuber and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie from a few weeks back that had people eagerly scouring the information for clues.
The attorney reminded listeners, “we are very clear in our declaration that this was not suicide,” particularly due to the fact that Jelani’s remains were found at a different location than his body was.
Read more about Jelani Day’s autopsy report here.
[Via]
