Another Lynching Mistaken for Suicide?

Bladenboro, NC – On the morning of August 29, the body of Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a noose fastened to a swing set at a trailer park in the small eastern North Carolina town of Bladenboro about a half-mile from his home. The 17-year-old African American high school junior and football player was last seen leaving his house around 10:30 p.m.

A 911 call came in at 7:25 a.m. the next day. The caller, a woman who got physically ill during the conversation, said, “I have a man hanging from a swing set at Bladen Rental Properties.” The dispatcher told the caller to cut down the person to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. The call ended with the dispatcher sending help as the distraught woman tried to free the body.

The initial investigation into the death, conducted by a State Bureau of Investigation team, quickly concluded that Lacy’s death was a suicide – too quickly, the NC NAACP charges.

The NAACP speculated over investigators’ claims that Lacy was suicidally depressed, and say he was just experiencing normal grief over the recent death of his great-uncle. Why, if the teen were going to kill himself, would he do so at a mostly white trailer park?

The noose was fashioned from a black canvas belt that was tied end-to-end to a blue canvas belt. Neither of the belts belonged to Lacy. When Lacy left his home for the last time he was wearing size 12 gray athletic shoes.

The local medical examiner reported that at the death scene Lacy was wearing white sneakers without laces; law enforcement photographs show they were a size 10.5. However, Lacy’s body was shoeless when it arrived at the medical examiner’s office.

The NAACP also questioned whether the Lacy case is yet another instance of what it calls “quick call suicides” — suspicious hanging deaths of black men, most of them in the South. The deaths have been immediately classified as suicides without extensive investigations, despite evidence that foul play may have been involved.