Sunday, April 23, 2006

STRANGE ENDING

Some of you may remember the story I told last summer about Sir Saunders testifying in the Logan Young case in Memphis. Young was the Alabama Football booster convicted of racketeering, also known as paying a poor kid to play at Bama. It looks like Young stayed out of jail and then. . .
The morning of April 11, a housekeeper arrived at 226 East Goodwyn St. for her typical Tuesday shift at (Logan) Young's home. She noticed blood throughout the house, and when she peeked into Young's bedroom a bit before 9 a.m., she found him dead on the floor. In a 911 call released last week, the housekeeper, identified only as "Amy," said Young had been beaten to death.

Memphis police arrived within minutes, but they could not study the scene or handle objects in the house until receiving permission from Young's family or obtaining a warrant. Memphis Police public information officer Sgt. Vince Higgins said that process took much of Tuesday morning. In the interim, he said, officers observed the scene and began to draw conclusions.

Hearing what they were saying, and seeing TV crews and newspaper reporters gathering outside the home, Higgins decided to make a statement. He described Young's death as "brutal" and said police would need dental and fingerprint records to identify the body, which appeared to be the victim of a homicide.

"That was a mistake," Higgins said this past Thursday. "We probably gave out too much information too soon, and it was obviously inaccurate."

After a two-day investigation, police and the local medical examiner's office ruled the death accidental, saying Young died from blunt force trauma after slipping on an interior staircase and bashing his head on an iron post at the bottom.

Higgins said investigators found no forensic evidence of a homicide, no signs of forced entry, robbery or a struggle existed, and only one set of bloody shoe prints was discovered.

Police surmised that Young stumbled from his kitchen to his bathroom to his bedroom in the next few hours, employing newspapers and towels to stop the bleeding. A source with knowledge of the investigation told the Sentinel that Young was taking blood thinners and diuretics to help heal from an October kidney transplant; the medicine would have made stopping the bleeding difficult.

That's the official story anyway. The article also says that people are dubious of the Memphis police's findings.

1 comment:

Dude said...

Wow, that's some turnabout. It always leads me wondering if the Chief of Police was found in the Hall with the Candlestick just before the revised story was published.

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