Fight hasn’t been ruled out as cause of Nex Benedict’s death, police say
An Owasso police spokesperson said that previous statements that Nex Benedict didn’t die as a result of “trauma” didn’t rule out the fight as a contributing factor.
OWASSO, Okla. — Authorities haven’t ruled out that a fight at school could have contributed to the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old transgender student whose case has drawn international media attention.
Owasso police said in a statement last week that “preliminary information” from the medical examiner’s office indicated that Benedict “did not die as a result of trauma.” The police department added that further comments on Benedict’s cause of death were pending until toxicology results are released.
Some community members and others on social media took the department’s statement to mean that any potential injuries Benedict sustained from the fight didn’t cause his death. However, Lt. Nick Boatman, a police spokesperson, told NBC News on Tuesday that that wasn’t what the statement was intended to mean.
“We did not interpret that in any way,” he said of the word “trauma,” which he said was used by the medical examiner’s office. He said that the medical examiner’s office didn’t say it had ruled out the fight as causing or contributing to Benedict’s death and that “people shouldn’t make assumptions either way.”
The police department doesn’t normally release such information early, he said, but it did so to be transparent and in response to an inordinate amount of public pressure because of the international media coverage the case has attracted. The department also wanted to address a “fury of misinformation on social media,” including that Benedict was “beat to a bloody pulp and had to be carried out and wasn’t taken to the nurse” — all of which he said isn’t true.
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