Thread by @jtlarsen

A black 16-year-old boy from South Bend was found hanged in 2011. Officials called it suicide.

His mother called it murder.

She asked Mayor @PeteButtigieg for help. He told her to call the office, and then never called back.

Here’s the story.
tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…

South Bend reporter @jharrell6468 began working on this story in 2011, soon after Jiha’d Vasquez was found hanged.

Jeff spoke to officials and obtained police records.

@TYTInvestigates asked him to finish the story for us.

None of what he found has been made public until now.

Despite his name--given him by an absentee father--Jiha'd was a devout Christian.

He attended summer camps run by missionaries. Carried a Bible in his backpack.

Here he is at one of his camps (photo courtesy of Stephanie Jones, Jiha'd's mom).

The coroner declared it suicide on the scene. There was no autopsy.

In fact, that coroner had no medical training, but was still able to declare that death happened within "seconds."

While the coroner gave time of death as 1:50 p.m.--about when police showed up--county police reported that the incident occurred between 7 the previous night and 8 that morning.

And the next day declared it “Case Closed” with no further investigation.

We've posted some of the documents Jeff obtained.

These include the death certificate, coroner and police reports, and a letter written by Jiha'd's sister claiming that his classmates knew about the death before police showed up.
documentcloud.org/public/search/…

One reason Jiha'd's family suspects foul play is that they say items of his were missing, including his wallet.

Jiha'd was hanged with a portion of the bedsheet he had brought for a sleepover at a friend's. But the rest of the sheet is unaccounted for.

And there was no note.

So Jones went to South Bend Common Council meetings the following summer.

Here are the minutes showing she told her story at an August 2012 meeting attended by Buttigieg:
docs.southbendin.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

Thomas Bush from the local NAACP also attended and spoke about Jiha'd's death.

Here's how Jones recalls what happened after they addressed the Common Council.

The meeting came 5 months after Buttigieg went through a wrenching controversy with the black community and SBPD.

Buttigieg had demoted the city's first black police chief over secret tapes that allegedly captured other SBPD using racial slurs.
tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…

The man Buttigieg had appointed 5 months prior as the interim replacement for the city's first black police chief...

was the very coroner whose findings Jones was now asking Buttigieg to help her challenge.

In fact, that coroner, Chuck Hurley, had been SBPD's chief in the 1980s.

And a fellow city employee back then...city attorney Rich Hill...had been instrumental in ousting the black chief, after Buttigieg brought Hill in as outside counsel to help with the tapes issue.

Both Hurley... the chief-then-coroner-then-chief... and Hill, the attorney, had worked for the city under Mayor Roger Parent, who later became a major political patron of Pete Buttigieg.

After we requested comment on Monday, the Buttigieg campaign said it would need time to respond. We will update our story in the event of a response.

According to a police report Jeff obtained, Jiha'd was found hanging from a utility tower crossbar on the afternoon of April 14, 2011.

He had last been seen leaving a friend's house the evening of April 12, after which Jones reported him missing.

I talk about this story on today's edition of TYTI Daily. I hope folks will subscribe, we discuss our reporting, important news from other outlets, and media-analysis stuff every day.

https://twitter.com/tytinvestigates/status/1131599036191002624