The heartbroken mother of a Mississippi teen who died after he was run over by a police cruiser last week is mourning the milestones she’ll never get to see her only son achieve.
“I never [will] have the chance, an opportunity, to see my son grow up and become the young man I always knew he was going to be,” Kaychia Calvert said Friday about her 17-year-old son Kadarius Smith.
Smith died after being run over by a Leland police cruiser early March 21, according to attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Calvert, and the city attorney representing police.
The teen’s death has been agonizing, Calvert said.
“He’s supposed to graduate next year. I’m not going to get the chance to see that. He was going to move to Georgia to start his life. I’ll never see that. … If he would have had kids, I will never get the chance to see that. I will never see anything — nothing.”
Crump said that Smith died after a patrol vehicle began chasing the teen as he was running home after police were called to a house he had been at. Smith was hit from behind and had “cruiser tire marks on his back,” Crump said.
Calvert, who did not witness the incident, said a nurse told her 24-year-old daughter about the tire marks.
Crump said the teen died at a hospital.
Calvert said her son and a cousin were at a nearby home about 2 a.m. the day he died. Someone at the home called police after asking Smith to leave amid a dispute, Calvert said.
Smith was on the porch when police arrived, Crump said.
“When the police pulled up to the house … Kadarius took off running,” Crump said. “He was running home, from what we understand.”
Crump said Friday that he’s working to determine if there is video of the incident. The attorney for Leland, a city of about 4,000 residents about 115 miles northwest of Jackson, Miss., could not say if there was any video and did not know if Leland police have dashcams or bodycams.
Crump called the actions of the officer…
Read the full article here
