The Connecticut National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, is investigating after it learned that a 17-year-old’s body was found in the woods 20 days after a crash on Route 15 sparked a multi-agency search in February.
The body of 17-year-old Khasir Jennette was found Feb. 21 along the banks of the Quinnipiac River near the Wallingford Compost Center. Jennette had been missing since Feb. 1, when police say he may have fled into the woods after a crash on Route 15 in Wallingford during dangerously cold overnight temperatures, state police said.
Jennette died of hypothermia due to environmental exposure, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The NAACP held a news conference about the incident at 11 a.m. on Friday. Connecticut State Police released an outline on their response to the case shortly after NAACP’s conference.
“I’m deeply concerned about this particular matter because we just found out about this about two days ago,” said Scot X Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP, in the conference.
The crash happened on Feb. 1 around 9:45 p.m. State police received a report of a multi-vehicle crash with a vehicle still in the lane on Route 15 North near Exit 58A in Wallingford, according to state police’s report.
When officers arrived, they found three vehicles involved in the crash, including a black Acura RDX that was unoccupied with several cell phones inside. The people in that car were later determined to have fled on foot, state police said.
It was also later determined that the Acura had been reported stolen and linked to an armed carjacking in North Haven earlier that evening, according to police. Police began searching for anyone who was in the car after that.
Around 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, a woman called state police and told them she believed her son, Jennette, was involved in the accident and “is in the woods freezing.” She described what Jennette looked like and the clothes he was wearing. She told police she hadn’t seen him since Jan. 31, police said.
The mother said she knew her son was in the woods because she had received a phone call from another mother who had received a call from her own son, who said he was in the woods with Jennette, according to police.
State police said they then initiated a missing person investigation and later issued a Silver Alert.