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Lennon Lacy, a 17-year-old football player from Bladenboro, N.C., was found dead from an apparent hanging suicide last August. After claims from his mother and the NAACP that his death was actually a lynching, the FBI has said it will look further into the matter.

Lacy’s mother, Claudia Lacy, saw her son last on August 28 after he went for an evening walk at the advice of a doctor in regards to his asthma. The West Bladen High School lineman left his home around 10:30 p.m. that night and that was the last anyone would see of him. Ms. Lacy contends that her son was lynched after his body was found hanging from a swing set in the center of a mobile home community.

WYFF 4 has more:

Claudia Lacy says she can accept anything: even that her youngest son committed suicide — if it’s proven and explained to her.

However, she says, local and state investigators have done neither to support their theory that Lennon Lacy hanged himself one summer night.

“That’s all I’ve ever asked for: what is due, owed rightfully to me and my family — justice. Prove to me what happened to my child,” Lacy says.

She says she’s long lost confidence in the Bladenboro Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

Now, the FBI is looking into Lacy’s death and the local and state investigations that followed.

There are several angles to the story that serve Lacy’s claims that an outside person or persons could have committed the crime. The teen was involved in an interracial relationship with a 31-year-old White woman, which is mother didn’t necessarily approve of and thought the community at large didn’t either for other reasons.

Via the NAACP, the family hired a forensic pathologist who called into question the improbability of Lacy hanging himself from a 7-foot-6 frame when he stood just 5-foot-9 and there was no sign of anything he could have stood on around the structure. Also curious was that he was wearing clothing items his mother says she’s never purchased from him.

Photo: Lacy Family Handout