NEW ORLEANS — The legal team led by civil rights attorney Ben Crump says they are making some headway into what could have happened to Glenn Foster Jr. inside the Pickens’s County Jail, which remains a mystery a week after his death.
"A lot of people have been coming forward and we have people that are going to be taking detailed reports of what they said occurred [what] they knew about with Glenn Foster," Crump said.
According to the legal team, the State Bureau of Investigation — a subunit of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency — wasn’t moving fast enough to determine what led to Foster’s death. That is priority number one for Crump.
"The family of Glenn Foster is arranging for an independent autopsy to be conducted to get answers as to why their son, this husband, this father — who was having a mental health crisis — ended up dead in the custody of the sheriff’s department,” Crump said.
The recent history of the Picken's County Jail, which is run by the sheriff, is also alarming the legal team. In August, it was reported that Michael Broady Jr. died in a case that resembles Foster's death.
"It should not be if you’re a Black person and you have a mental health crisis that there ends up bring a death sentence in America," Crump said. "It’s inexplicable how he died in the back of that police truck.”
For now, the team is hoping that more information will come out soon as to the events leading up to Foster’s death. Crump said that the autopsy will provide some answers from a physical perspective, but there are still questions for the people who witnessed the events in the jail.
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