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Activists Rally During Autopsy:
A Final Determination in the Death of a Boot Camp Inmate is Expected
to Take Eight Weeks
By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published March 13, 2006
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TAMPA - A Hillsborough County medical examiner
and a team of pathologists worked 12 hours Monday to complete a
second autopsy on Martin Lee Anderson, the 14-year-old boy who died
after a beating by guards at a Panama City boot camp.
When it was all over, attorneys for the boy's
family told NAACP leaders what preliminary autopsy results had
found.
But those results are expected to remain secret
until a news conference at 8 a.m. today.
Dale Landry, a state NAACP officer, said the
family's attorney asked that the findings not be shared with the
public immediately.
"The word from the lawyers is that they are
encouraged based on the second autopsy," Landry said, declining to
elaborate.
Final determination of a cause of death was
expected to take up to eight weeks, after toxicology tests are
completed.
"This is just one facet of it," Hillsborough
County State Attorney Mark Ober said Monday afternoon during a break
in the procedure.
Ober was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to oversee
the investigation into Martin's death. Ober said the full
investigation will take months to complete.
His family is convinced that Martin died
because of the beating, not sickle cell trait, as ruled by Bay
County Medical Examiner Charles Siebert.
"My baby was beaten, tortured and killed in a
boot camp," the boy's mother, Gina Jones, said before the autopsy
began. "All I want is justice for the ones that are responsible."
She said the guards who beat her son should be
punished. So, Jones said, should the nurse, who appeared to be
standing by and doing nothing.
"She could have stopped it," Jones said.
The Sickle Cell Disease Association of America
Inc., based in Baltimore, also disputes Siebert's autopsy report.
The group issued a statement that called Siebert's finding
"completely baseless."
About 50 demonstrators joined Martin's family
at the Medical Examiner's Office in Tampa, demanding answers in the
teen's death. Florida NAACP president Adora Obi Nweze drove to Tampa
from Miami to lead the rally, called "Resurrection For Justice."
The crowd included community activists Connie
Burton, member of the International People's Democratic Uhuru
Movement and Michelle Patty, who acted as spiritual guide to Lisa
Wilkins, whose two sons died after a hit and run crash involving
dance teacher Jennifer Porter.
"Our concern is that we get a truth," Obi Nweze
said. "We have reason to doubt our state based on what has happened
in Panama City."
[Last modified March 13, 2006, 22:45:03]
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