“He was loving,” his cousin Celina Charles tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “He was friendly and genuine, always smiling.”
So when he went missing from his father’s home on the afternoon of Oct. 30, Jacko and his ex-wife, Quawan’s mom Roxanne Nelson, both felt it was out of character for the 15-year-old.
Hours passed. About 8 p.m., Nelson reported the teen’s disappearance to police.
Four days laterhe was found dead, his body face-down in shallow water in a sugar cane field near Loreauville, about 25 miles from his father’s home.
Pallbearers carry Quawan Charles' casket.Brad Bowie/Acadiana Advocate
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Finally, on Nov. 2, a relative says, Nelson learned from one of her son’s acquaintances that Quawan had been at the home of a 17-year-old friend and the friend’s mother, who’d picked him up in their car from his father’s house.
Nelson fed the tip to Baldwin police. They interviewed the friend’s mom and confirmed the details including, according to the friend’s mom, that Quawan had later left the friend’s house on his own.
But since that sighting was in neighboring Iberia Parish, Nelson was told she’d have to report Quawan missing there as well. When she did, she pleaded with the local Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office to ping her son’s missing cell phone – a step Baldwin’s Assistant Chief of Police Sam Wise later said his department did not have the technology to do.
After doing so, Iberia Parish deputies were able to narrow a search to where Quawan’s body was found.
The delayed discovery has the family, their attorneys and local activists questioning whether valuable time was lost, and why the media wasn’t alerted before Quawan’s body was recovered. As they’ve put a spotlight on law enforcement’s actions, Quawan’s death has been mourned nationwide.
Quawan Charles is remembered at a Nov. 13 protest in New York.Andrew H Walker/Shutterstock
After the coroner ruled Quawan died from “likely drowning” in water that his family’s attorneys say was no more than a foot or two deep, Iberia Sheriff Tommy Romero says his office is treating the investigation as a homicide.
“Had they responded like a 15-year-old white girl was lost,” says Jamal Taylor, co-founder of the nonprofit minority rights advocacy group Stand Black tells PEOPLE, “it’s my thought that Quawan would have been found alive.”
Wendy Grossman Kantor
source: people.com
