Sorry Wingnuts, You Will Have To Find A Different Lie About Freddie Gray's Severed Spine

Freddie Gray mysteriously died from a severed spine after being arrested by Baltimore police on April 12, and while the department has yet to issue its report on how that happened -- for now, the official explanation is "dunno, oops, bummer" -- it would be irresponsible of conservatives, on Fox News and the interwebs and running for president, not to speculate about all of the possible reasons why Gray is dead, besides that the Baltimore Police Department killed him. Like so:  

The Free Republic website said Wednesday that Gray's "life-ending injuries to his spine may have possibly been the result of spinal and neck surgery that he allegedly received a week before he was arrested." The article also said the injury was a result of a car accident and cited thefourthesate.com as the source of information. The story did not cite any court records.

Sure, he "may have possibly" died from a surgery the week before. Or maybe possibly a leprechaun jumped on his back? Or perhaps it was a lack of Jesus. And a moral code. And a dad. 

Lucky for those oh-so-concerned and definitely-not-racist conservatives desperately seeking THE REAL KILLER, the Baltimore Sun looked into this whole surgery thing. Guess whether there's any validity to it whatsoever. Go on. Guess.

Those reports — which raise questions about the injury that led to his death in April 19 — point to Howard County court records as proof.

But court records examined Wednesday by The Baltimore Sun show the case had nothing to do with a car accident or a spine injury. Instead, they are connected to a lawsuit alleging that Gray and his sister were injured by exposure lead paint.

So, no, it was not possible for Freddie Gray to have died from complications following a back surgery following a car accident, because there was no surgery and there was no car accident. Instead, there was a settlement from a lawsuit against the owner of the home Freddie and his sisters grew up in, alleging that exposure to lead paint caused "damaging lead levels in their blood, which led to educational, behavioral and medical problems." That's a little different, isn't it?

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But don't give up, conservatives who also believe Gray's rap sheet proves he deserved to be killed by police, if that's even how it happened! Maybe it was the lead paint exposure that caused his back to suddenly break -- no, really, maybe that's it, as our wingnut comment friends explain Freddie probably had brittle bones from his lead exposure, and how could the police even have known??! -- so you could still say it's his fault for being dead, because if he didn't want to be dead at the age of 25, he shouldn't have grown up in that family, in that house, in that city. With those kinds of poor life decisions, he was just asking for it.

[ Baltimore Sun ]