17-year-old Emmanuel Mwakadi was set to graduate from Henry Clay High School next week and be the first in his family to graduate from college. The Mwakadi family had immigrated to Lexington from the Congo eight years ago, and Emmanuel had big plans for his future.
“He wanted to eventually be employed by the Police Department. He's very interested in that. He'd been training with them in furtherance of that.” Attorney Justin Peterson said Emmanuel “would often break up fights at school.”
Peterson believes that's what happened in the weeks leading up to Emmanuel’s death. Peterson and attorney Maston Childers III represent Emanuel's family. Peterson and Childers shared a video with WUKY showing Emanuel breaking up a fight at Henry Clay. As he intervened, Emmanuel was hit several times in the head.
The date of the fight is still being verified, but after talking with witnesses and other students, Peterson believes the violence on campus runs deeper than the incident involving Emmanuel.
“We started learning pretty quickly in our investigation how often fights were happening and that there's some escalating violence in this particular high school. And so as we talked to more and more people, we got to know a little bit about some of their fears and concerns and many of them, if not all of them have stated, that they believe there's a fight almost every day.”
We contacted Fayette County Public Schools to ask about protocol and medical attention provided following a fight. District Public Information Officer Dia Davidson responded "A priority of Fayette County Public Schools is to keep our students and staff safe. But, as this is an ongoing investigation, FCPS will not be offering any further comment on this situation."
Peterson says the initial coroner’s report shows Emanuel suffered a frontal lobe injury, but the cause of the injury isn’t clear at this time.
“Those are things we're investigating. Whether or not the blows he received to his head contributed to his death, whether or not some failures in the system caused this to happen. We've not said those things, and we're not going to make those allegations until we have all the information available to us.”
Peterson said the family wants to know the facts of what happened and to ensure that the tragedy they suffered doesn’t happen to another family. He added, “It’s the best way to honor Emmanuel.”
We are looking into the claim that violence within Henry Clay High School is a regular occurrence and will bring you more information as it becomes available.
