As for the usual number of police on campus being 2-4... what the literal duck? You school must be rough. I don't recall there ever being a single police officer at any of my schools. The US is seriously messed up if you need police in schools. I don't know how parents over there can stand knowing it's that dangerous to send kids to school.
There were 36 cameras inside and outside the gym of Lowndes High School in Valdosta, where the body of Kendrick Johnson was discovered. The video was released as a result of legal action, filed by his family, that CNN joined.
Johnson's family suspects the 17-year-old was murdered and that someone has tried to cover up evidence in the case.
One clip shows Johnson in the gym. A second shows him walking in, then running out of the frame. In both videos, students suddenly appear.
An attorney for Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine said the video was not altered or edited by anyone within the sheriff's office. An attorney for the school likewise said that what was provided to the sheriff's office was the raw feed, with no edits.
A third clip, which shows students playing in the gym and the mats where Johnson's body was found, is blurry.
And I'm still amazed you even have cops on site, in the UK we don't even have security guards or anything. Nothing bad has happened to any school in South Wales that I remember.
It's also funny how they say the video wasn't altered, but yet you can clearly see that the images DON'T match up, you see the victim running towards the mats area and then all of a sudden out of no where kids appear in the camera frames.
"I was not notifedi n (sic) this death until 15:45 hours. The investigative climate was very poor to worse when I arrived on the scene. The body had been noticably (sic) moved. The scene had been compromised and there was no cooperation from law enforcement at the scene. Furthermore the integrity of the evidence bag was compromised on January 13, 2013 by opening the sealed bag and exhibiting the dead body to his father," wrote Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson in a report dated January 22.
"I do not approve of the manner this case was handled. Not only was the scene compromised, the body was moved. The integrrety (sic) was breached by opening a sealed body bag, information necessary for my lawful investigation was withheld," he said.
The coroner's death investigation report was obtained by CNN through an open records request directed at the coroner's office.
A second coroner's death investigation report was provided by the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office.
The second report, which is not signed nor dated, is not nearly as critical as the first.
"I was not called by investigating officers regarding this death until the afore listed time of notification," it read.
It was not immediately clear why there were two coroner's reports. The inconsistencies between them were also not clear.
When contacted by CNN, a lawyer for the Lowndes County sheriff and the Lowndes County coroner declined to address specific questions about the reports.
"In light of the US attorney's review of this matter, the Lowndes County sheriff and the Lowndes County coroner will not comment further on this case. They will fully cooperate and respond to all inquiries of the United States attorney," Jim Elliott wrote in an e-mail.
Lowndes County Schools insists the video is "a raw feed with no edits," and the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office, which asserts Johnson accidentally died while reaching for a shoe in one of the mats, says it didn't edit any files, according to their lawyers.
CNN, which filed suit to secure access to the video, hired forensic video analyst Grant Fredericks to analyze more than 290 hours of material from all 35 cameras inside and outside of the gym. Fredericks is a U.S. Justice Department consultant and contract instructor for the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
CNN also provided Fredericks and his company, the Spokane, Washington-based Forensic Video Solutions, with hundreds more hours of video from 31 cameras in other parts of Lowndes County High School.
Fredericks quickly knocked down the Johnsons' concerns -- they're all easily explained, he said -- but his examination raised what could be another mystery: at least an hour of missing video from all four cameras inside the gym.
The FBI was expected Thursday to seize the original hard drives from the surveillance system at Lowndes High School, where 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a rolled-up gym mat earlier this year, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation surrounding the hard drives.
U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia Michael Moore issued a grand jury subpoena to seize the hard drives, the source said.