Cause of Death Revealed for Teen Fatally Struck by Mississippi Police Cruiser; Authorities Report No Available Footage
In March, a police car hit and killed a Black 17-year-old boy in Mississippi.
The autopsy report that PEOPLE just got says that Kadarius Smith died of “massive blunt head trauma” in what the medical examiner has called an accident.
According to the four-page report, Kadarius had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a broken skull, and left femur, as well as cuts and scrapes on his brain.
“A vehicle is said to have hit the above deceased,” Erin A. Barnhart writes in her report. The driver of the car was a police officer from Leland.
Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who works with Kadarius’ family, said in a statement that the police officers who killed him “need to be held accountable for their deadly actions.”
Crump said, “These autopsy results show the cruel and tragic way that Kadarius left us—with his head crushed under the huge weight of a police cruiser.” He also said, “There is no reason to run over another person with a car so hard that you crush their head is okay.”
It’s not clear what caused the deadly car accident.
According to Crump, Kadarius was walking home with friends early on March 21 when “a police cruiser began chasing him.” The witness was not named.
According to a highly redacted incident report that PEOPLE obtained, an unnamed responding officer says they were sent to a nearby home after getting a call that there were “two suspects outside of the residence with handguns.”
There is only one suspect on the two-page report. He is a Black man, but his age and name are not given. There are references to Kadarius in other parts of the study. The story doesn’t say anything else about the second suspect.
Kadarius’s family begged for body cam and dash-cam footage in the weeks after his death. Edward J. Bogen, who works for the Leland Police Department, told PEOPLE that there is no such footage because police and cruisers did not have cameras at the time.
“In 2024, not having body or dash cameras is irresponsible and shows a widespread cultural problem in these departments,” says Crump. He has represented the family of Trayvon Martin and other Black teens who died in high-profile police-involved deaths, like Michael Brown and Martin Lee Anderson.
Bogen tells PEOPLE that both cameras have now been given to the police.
At 1:45 a.m. on March 21, police were called to a home in Leland. In the incident report, an officer writes that Kadarius “jumped from the porch” and “took off running.”
Kadarius got to Huddleston Street, where another officer in a police cruiser, who was only described as a Black man in the report, was also after the teen. This officer lost track of Kadarius. The report says that the officer “could not stop the [cruiser] immediately at that time,” which is why he “hit Kadarius Smith with the patrol unit.”
The report says that the teen was taken to Delta Regional Hospital in Greenville, Miss., but was later declared dead.
The officer who chased Kadarius on foot and the officer who arrived at the scene after he was hit and found him “laying on the ground hardly responding” are both interviewed for the report. However, the driver of the cruiser is not interviewed.
Officers didn’t say in the report that they found a gun on Kadarius or in the area, and Crump says that none have been found.
The event was to be looked into by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
When asked by email on July 17, Bogen said that the police department “has never received any reports” from either group.
Some questions about the autopsy report were put to Bogen, but he refused to answer them.
The names of the cops who were on the scene, including the driver, have not been made public yet. Bogen says the driver is “back working for the PD.”
