The mayor of Mississippi’s capital city blames miscommunication between government agencies for a family learning their loved one’s fate almost six months after they reported him missing.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba addressed the death of 37-year-old Dexter Wade in his annual “State of the City” speech on Thursday, People reported.
“There was a lack of communication with the missing person’s division, the coroner’s office and accident investigation,” Lumumba said, “and because of that, Mr. Wade, they were unable to find his family within an expeditious period of time.”
A Jackson Police Department car operated by an off-duty corporal reportedly hit Wade while he was walking across the six-lane Interstate 55 in south Jackson on March 5. His mother, Bettersten Wade, reported the father of two daughters missing on March 14 and learned almost six months afterward, on Aug. 24, that the police officer had killed him.
“All of this could have been avoided,” Wade’s mother said last week. “None of this had to happen.”
According to People, an earlier report from NBC News indicates an investigating Hinds County coroner was unable to identify Wade at the site of the accident and later did so using prescription drugs found on his body and contact information obtained from a medical provider.
The same investigating coroner gave the contact information to police shortly after.
On Thursday, Lumumba stated that the number “was not accurate or a good number to use,” resulting in police being unable “to make contact” with Wade’s family.
Police reportedly told the coroner there was no information on whether Wade’s family had been found and notified of his death, prompting the former to go to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors in late March for permission to bury the deceased.
Wade was buried in a pauper’s field at the Hinds County penal farm in July after authorities repeatedly told the coroner there had been no update, People reported, citing NBC.
Authorities called and informed Wade’s mother of his death on Aug. 24 and later gave his burial site. The grieving mother found her son beneath burial marker No. 672 and paid $250 to claim his corpse.
“To put your child and to bury him like that, and they knew that one of their officers had hit him,” Bettersten Wade said. “I could have understood if somebody shot him on the street … It’s just so much.”
In his Thursday speech, Lumumba noted, “at no point have we identified, or did any investigation reveal, that there was any police misconduct in this process and that there was any malicious intent.”
Jackson Director of Communications Melissa Faith Payne previously expressed similar comments, stating that police working on missing persons investigations were unaware Wade was the victim who died on March 5.
She also said the lead detective investigated the case until his retirement and that a later officer took up Wade’s case and traced it back to the coroner’s office, according to People.
The Jackson Police Department and the Jackson Coroner’s Office did not reply to People’s comment request.
“It is tragic to lose your child. It is tragic to suffer the consequences of having to bury your child before you pass. But to add insult to that trauma, it is even more difficult to not have the ability to have a proper burial for your child,” Lumumba said in his speech, People reported. “And for that we regret a circumstance that Mr. Wade’s family has had to deal with.”
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