Carmen Bolden’s day had to wait a month to see the body of her son Gelani, who was found dead in the Illinois River on September 4. But the fact that he had to wait so long, according to a series of articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, only exacerbates questions about what happened to him after she disappeared on August 24.
Although no suspects have been detained and no one has been questioned yet, the family suspects abuse. According to Chicago Tribune, The 25-year-old is a graduate of Alabama A&M. He was in his second semester at Illinois State University for speech pathology.
According to police, Day disappeared under mysterious conditions, and when the Lassalle County, Illinois, forensics office contacted his mother, they looked back and forth on dental records, and she became more confused about the office’s procedures.
Pantagraph, a Bloomington-Normal newspaper in Illinois, reported lagging behind more than 3,700 DNA cases by the end of August and that the average time to complete the results was 81 days. Illinois police and the Lassalle County Coroner’s Office were unable to explain why the results of Jelani Day were not provided, even though they were “expedited.”
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Bolden Day accuses the medical examiner of moving slowly, saying he barked at her, “Do you want us to identify your son or not?” Her lawyer, Hali M. Bezner, said she told the investigator she had no right to speak on the matter. way with her client.
The next day, Gelani Day’s body was positively identified, but the Illinois River had badly decomposed the body as it lay there, according to the Sun-Times. According to the medical examiner, there are no eyeballs, his jawbone has been “cut out”, Day has missing his front upper and lower teeth, and his organs are “completely liquefied” due to the length of his body in the river.
Bezner said the family’s private forensic pathologist could not find a brain, organs, liver or spleen. She said she was looking for plausible scientific explanations for what had happened to him.
Bezner told The Chicago Sun Times, “I’m really trying to ask questions and not go through a lot of conspiracies because I think it’s easy to go that way.” Day’s mother couldn’t see his body, but his grandmother and one of his brothers saw him. Bezner advised her not to see the remains.
“He was in such bad shape,” she said. “It’s just a heartbreaking story, for sure.”
“Whatever it takes to find out what happened to him, I want them to do it,” Bolden Day told ABC News. “I want you to use your tools and resources so we can find out what happened to Gelani because he didn’t disappear into the air.”
Meanwhile, a Change.org petition called for a federal investigation into Jelani Day’s death, and more than 22,000 have signed. This was announced by the FBI The pantagraph that he is cooperating in the investigation, but the details are unclear.