The Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office said Monday morning that the Kendrick Johnson case remains active more than a decade after the teen was found dead inside a rolled-up wrestling mat at Lowndes High School’s gym. Sheriff Ashley Paulk’s $500,000 reward still stands for information leading to an arrest and conviction in Johnson’s death.
Johnson was 17 when his body was found on Jan. 11, 2013, and the case has never fully left public view. A judge dismissed a $1 billion federal lawsuit his family filed in 2023 against several parties a month before the report, after finding problems that included immunity, failure to state a claim, procedural rule violations and statutes of limitations.
The case has also been shaped by dueling autopsy findings. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation autopsy concluded that Johnson died from accidental positional asphyxiation, while a private medical examiner hired at the family’s request said the cause was unexplained blunt force trauma. A third autopsy matched the first report, adding to a record that has kept the death under scrutiny for years.
The family amended its complaint over the past few years to include the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Lowndes County and Lowndes County Schools, among others. On March 2, the GBI filed a motion to dismiss that referenced the autopsy conclusion, underscoring how the legal fight has continued even as one court has already thrown out the family’s latest federal case.
That is the central reality of the Kendrick Johnson case now: the official investigation remains open, the reward is still on the table, and the dispute over how Johnson died has not been resolved in a way that has ended the fight around it.
