When we last checked in on the family of Dexter Wade in Jackson, Mississippi, his mother had learned that her son had been exhumed without her knowledge from the pauper’s grave where the police had buried him. The body had not been properly prepared by an embalmer, so it was badly decayed. She also learned that her son had his state ID in his pocket along with other identifying papers, despite having been told that the police had tried for months to identify him. Through all of this, Bettersten Wade and her family had never received even an apology, to say nothing of an explanation of how this could have happened. There still has been no explanation, but this weekend Ms. Wade received a public apology from a Jackson City councilman. (WLBT News)
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The family of Dexter Wade received one of, if not the first, public apology from a Jackson city leader. It comes just one day before his funeral…
On November 16, Dexter Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, told us her family had yet to receive an apology from the city of Jackson as they continue grieving the loss of their loved one.
However, on Sunday, Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes issued a public apology not just as a city leader but as a fellow parent as well.
Councilman Kenneth Stokes has also put forward a resolution for the council saying that the city plans to “do the right thing” and that they would never engage in a “coverup.” But when asked if that would be an indication that the city was taking responsibility for Wade’s death, he said it would not. It sounds for all the world like this is not a message saying, ‘We’re sorry the police accidentally killed your son and buried him in a pauper’s grave,’ but more like, ‘We’re sorry that mistakes were made.’
Yesterday, Dexter Wade’s mother was finally able to give him a proper funeral and burial. Civil rights leaders flew in from around the country to speak. Representatives from the city and county governments were on hand. But despite many follow-up questions being asked, no further answers of any substance were offered.
Maybe it’s just me, but it simply doesn’t feel like a vaguely worded apology and a funeral are enough here. Something just isn’t right. The city is blaming the lengthy search to find the identity of the man the police ran down on a highway with a patrol car as a case of “communication errors.” They say that Wade’s mother received no information all of the times she visited or called the police because of a lack of communication between the main police precinct and the missing persons division. They have yet to offer an explanation as to how Wade’s body could have had two forms of ID in a pocket along with a prescription medicine bottle with his name on it and they only managed to find the bottle. And when the agreed-upon time to exhume Wade’s body arrived and the family showed up, they learned that it had already been exhumed hours earlier without their knowledge.
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One of those things going wrong might be explained away by bureaucratic incompetence or poor training and procedures. Two such things might possibly be written off as an incredibly bad streak of luck on the part of the police and the county coroner’s office. By the time we reached the point of the exhumation, everyone involved, including the city and county governments, knew that the eyes of the nation were on this case. They knew the emotions that were roiling around the story of Dexter Wade and his family. What would possibly explain a decision to head out before the agreed time and exhume the body without the family and their attorneys being there?
The City Council was quick to invoke the word “cover-up,” as in, ‘We would never engage in a cover-up.’ But that’s exactly what this smells like and it stinks to high heaven. The problem is, I still can’t fathom what it is that they might be covering up without going to some Hollywood crime-drama script. Might the police have run Wade down intentionally and then had everyone involved help them write it off as an accident? If anyone was going to crack they’d probably have come forward by now. Was there any other evidence left with the body that they needed to hide and is that why it was exhumed early? We may never know, but someone needs to tell this story in full.
