Skip to main content Accessibility

FBI to investigate death of black North Carolina teen

The FBI is now investigating the August death of a black 17-year-old football player whose family and friends believe he may have been the victim of foul play in Bladenboro, N.C.


State investigators ruled the death of Lennon Lacy a suicide, but his family and many others in the community wonder if he was the victim of a lynching, The Washington Post reports in today’s editions.

In another stunning development today, Lacy's former girlfriend, Michelle Brimhall, broke her silence and told Dailymail.com that she believes Lennon Lacy was murdered because of their interracial relationship.

“I believe Lennon was murdered,” Brimhall told the online news site.

The 31-year-old woman said she had been “targeted by racists during” because of her relationship with a black teenager almost half her age.  Brimhall, who is now living in Illinois, “fled the town for her own safety,” the Daily Mail reported.

In an interview with Don Lemon on CNN Tonight, the victim’s mother, Claudia Lacy, said there are inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding her son’s death.

“Do you think his death could have been racially motivated?” Lemon asked Claudia Lacy. “It could have been,” she responded.

Her son recently had broken up with Brimhall, who had three children, an ex-husband and a drug history, according to media reports.  Brimhall denied any involvement with drugs in her interview with the Daily Mail.

Still, there are questions and inconsistencies over the way the death scene was processed.  The victim’s hands were not covered with plastic bags, which is normal protocol, so forensic pathologists can check for foreign DNA and other evidence.

Most disturbing, the mother said, is that her son had just left home wearing a new pair of Air Jordan shoes.  But they were never located after his lifeless body was found on Aug. 28 hanging from a wooden swing set with two belts tied around his neck. The shoes on his feet were two sizes too small, without shoe laces, and they weren’t his.

“It’s not feasible,” Claudia Lacy told CNN.  “Two sizes too small?  Why?”

Her son was excited about the start of school and his first home football game on Aug. 29. Investigators found no suicide note. The autopsy report makes no mention of the missing shoes or those found on the body.

The victim’s mother and private attorney Allen Rogers, of Fayetteville, along with  Rev. William J.Barber II, the president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, asked U.S. Attorney Thomas G. Walker of the Eastern District of North Carolina to request the FBI investigation.  There was a march supporting that effort last weekend in Bladenboro.

“We are glad to hear that the request made by the North Carolina NAACP and the family of Lennon Lacy for a federal investigation has been accepted,” Barber said, adding there is a need for “a thorough investigation.”

“There are too many questions and contradictions raised by our independent pathology report and stories in the community about the facts, quick conclusions, and how the death scene was not protected,” Barber said in a statement released to Hatewatch.

Comments or suggestions? Send them to HWeditor@splcenter.org. Have tips about the far right? Please email: source@splcenter.org. Have documents you want to share? Please visit: https://www.splcenter.org/submit-tip-intelligence-project. Follow us on Twitter @Hatewatch.