Dexter Wade, buried without his family’s knowledge, had ID on him with his home address, lawyer says

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By Jon Schuppe, NBC News

Wade, 37, was run over by a police cruiser in March and buried in a pauper’s grave. His mother searched for him for months before learning what happened.

Dexter Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, watches as his body is carried after being exhumed from a pauper’s grave at the Hinds County jail’s penal farm. (Ashleigh Coleman for NBC News)

An independent pathologist examining the newly exhumed body of Dexter Wade — the Mississippi man killed by police and buried in a pauper’s grave without his mother’s knowledge — found a wallet with a state identification card that included the address of a home he shared with his mother, the family’s lawyer said Thursday.

The pathologist, Frank Peretti, reported that he found the wallet in the front pocket of Wade’s jeans and that it contained his state identification card with his home address, along with a credit card and a health insurance card, attorney Ben Crump said in a statement.

[…]

A representative of Crump’s confirmed that the home address was the same as his mother’s, Bettersten Wade. She reported her 37-year-old son missing on March 14, nine days after he was struck by a police cruiser as he was crossing a highway.

She got no information from police about what happened to him until Aug. 27, when she learned that he’d been killed less than an hour after he had left his house and buried in a pauper’s field owned by Hinds County.

The original article details the full extent of mistreatment Wade’s body was subjected to after his death.

This tragedy follows a recent negligence by Mississippi police that nearly cost a mother her son.

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