On Monday, authorities in Jackson, Mississippi, exhumed Dexter Wade's body, as requested. But they didn't wait for his family to arrive. The city has been under fire, because Wade's mother wasn't told for months that her son, 37, had been struck and killed in March by an off-duty Jackson Police Department officer driving his work SUV. Though Wade's mother had filed a missing-person report and a coroner had identified Wade through fingerprints and from a bottle of prescription medication he had on him, the police department did not notify Wade's family, USA Today reports. Instead, Wade's body went unclaimed in the county morgue and was buried in an unmarked grave at a pauper’s cemetery. Then, on Monday, Jackson authorities again moved forward without the family. The exhumation had been scheduled with the family for 11:30 a.m. Monday, but it was done at 8 a.m. without any notice, said civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump.
City officials have said the circumstances around and after his death were an accident, and there was no malicious intent. But Crump, who took on cases regarding the killings of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, reiterated calls on Monday for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Wade’s death and the aftermath. "It’s a low-down dirty shame what happened today,” Crump said. “What happened to Dexter Wade in March and what happened to Dexter Wade here today reeks to the high heavens.”