A Black family is sad because their son was run over by a police officer, who then lied about it.
Dexter Wade hasn’t been seen since March 5, when he left his mother’s house in Jackson, Mississippi. That night, Wade and his mum, Bettersten, had a fight. She didn’t think he was in danger right away when he left. But after a few days of not hearing from him, she called the police. Wade’s case was messed up from the start because the first detective spelt his last name wrong on the report of a missing person. While she looked for her child for seven months, the police knew he was already dead.
Wade was walking across Interstate 55 when he was hit by a police car not long after he left his house. Soon, police said that Wade’s death was an accident. The Hinds County Coroner’s Office did not tell the family when he was named and their contact information for his mother was found. Instead, they gave Wade’s information to the Jackson Police Department so that they could report his death, which they never did. Wade’s body was kept in the mortuary and then placed in a grave with a number at the Hinds County jail’s penal farm. Bettersten didn’t find out about this until early October.
It took them all that time to find him, and they knew who he was, Bettersten said.
Betterstein and her family didn’t want to call the police about her son because her brother died in 2019 after being slammed to the ground by a Jackson police officer. Because of this and the fact that Wade had bipolar illness and schizophrenia, his family and friends were even less likely to call the police. Now that Wade’s body has been found, Betterstein is raising money to have it properly buried after being removed.
The police cop who hit Wade has not been named in public.