On a recent school night in southeast Georgia, three teens pulled up to an emergency room and told staff there was an individual in their white Jeep Wrangler who needed medical attention after consuming a mix of alcohol and antidepressants.
When hospital personnel opened the vehicle’s rear door, they found 19-year-old Trenton Lehrkamp lying unresponsive in the back, his clothes soaked in urine and his body covered in spray paint. Lehrkamp was breathing just “six times per minute,” according to a police report about the March 21 incident. His blood alcohol level was 0.464 — nearly six times the legal limit for driving. As staff pulled Lehrkamp out of the vehicle, the teens, who were all under the age of 18, repeatedly asked if they were free to leave. After providing their names and phone numbers to the hospital, they drove off. Lehrkamp was rushed to the ICU and placed on a ventilator.
A few days later, disturbing images allegedly showing teens abusing Lehrkamp began circulating on social media, sparking outrage in St. Simons Island, the small coastal community that touts its unspoiled beaches and Southern charm and where police say the incident leading to Lehrkamp’s hospitalization occurred. One photo shows four boys standing over Lehrkamp, who was passed out in a chair with his face covered, an orange substance on his clothes, and a sluglike object on his lap. In a video, a boy is seen spraying a water hose at Lehrkamp’s head as other teens look on. Glynn County police have identified the juveniles in the photo and video, served multiple search warrants, recovered electronic evidence, and interviewed Lehrkamp, who is still receiving treatment as he recovers, as well as other individuals involved, the department said. Yet as of Friday, more than two weeks after the 19-year-old was left nearly lifeless at the hospital, no arrests have been made.
“If we could just make a case off of one single photo or one single video without getting any other type of evidence, then that would not be a proper — that would not be a thorough investigation,” Glynn County Interim Police Chief O’Neal Jackson said during a news conference last week. “We can’t rush to judgment. We have to take our time on this, and that’s what we’re doing.”
But the lack of accountability so far has raised suspicions among some people in the community that the teens involved are getting special treatment. Though police have not publicly confirmed the juveniles’ identities, a list of names allegedly linked to the incident has been circulating on social media and includes kids from prominent St. Simons families. And in the wake of the delayed arrests in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot to death while jogging in nearby Brunswick, community members aren’t willing to stand by and wait for the wheels of justice to turn.
“This was almost another murder,” Emily McCarthy, 43, who lives and owns a business on the island, told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t think we have a single shred of patience left for waiting on justice.”
At the hospital on March 21, Lehrkamp’s father, Mark Lehrkamp, told police that his son had been at a friend’s, whose name was redacted from the report, and that this was not the first time he returned from the friend’s house with injuries. Four days prior, Trenton came home covered in WD-40, vomit, paint, glue, egg yolk, and spray paint, his father said. And two weeks before that, he had to take his son to the ER to get stitches for a laceration above his left eye.
“He never returns home normal,” Mark said, according to the report.
He told police his son would go to that person’s house because he had no other friends, and when he was there, he thought he was accepted and with people who liked him. Mark said he believed his son might feel that they look up to him because they were younger, according to the report. But for the same reason, Mark didn’t think his son would fight back or “defend himself” against those kids, because he knew he could get in trouble for hurting them.
According to the report, Mark has other photos and videos of previous incidents in which his son came home from the friend’s house “hurt or covered in objects,” as well as evidence that he was at that residence the night he was dropped off at the hospital. Trenton’s sister also provided police with a picture of a Snapchat message she received that night, saying, “Nigga Omg I know you’re sick of hearing it but like I wasn’t there but like Trenton is fucking dying apparently.”
She also gave police a voice message she received while she was on her way to the hospital from someone “stating what had happened to Trenton and that [REDACTED] had told [REDACTED] what they did.”
A representative for Lehrkamp’s family declined to talk to BuzzFeed News but said they are cooperating with the investigation and “trusting the process.” A GoFundMe page set up for the family accuses the juveniles involved in the March 21 incident of torture and assault, saying that the abuse went on “for hours.” When he was left at the hospital, Lehrkamp was “deemed inconclusive to life” and battled fevers and a lung infection, according to the page. He’s now breathing on his own and receiving treatment at an out-of-state facility.
“I’m alive and doing well, and I’m recovering,” Lehrkamp said in an audio message shared with local reporters earlier this week. “Just know it’s going to be a long time for me to get over this, through the trauma. But one day, hopefully within the next few months or so, I might be back. But justice will be served.”
In the absence of arrests and additional information from police about what happened the night Lehrkamp ended up at the hospital, rumors have been running wild among locals and on social media. Many believed that the teens had defecated on Lehrkamp. Included on the list of names allegedly linked to the incident was the child of a Glenn County police officer. And for days, community members believed that Lehrkamp was autistic. In a statement on Monday, Jackson, the interim police chief, dispelled those and other rumors, warning that misinformation “delays and hampers the investigation.”
Whether the teens involved are still in school has also been unclear. In a message sent to families last week, Glynn County Schools acknowledged that several students in the district may have been involved and that state law allows students to be disciplined for off-campus conduct that “makes the student’s continued presence at school a potential danger … or which disrupts the educational process.” However, the statement didn’t say whether the district has taken any action in reference to that statute.
A spokesperson for the district declined to answer BuzzFeed News’ questions.
McCarthy, whose stepson is a junior at Glynn Academy — the high school attended by those believed to be involved — said it’s been frustrating to get little to no information from the district about the students’ current status at the school.
“Can you imagine being in a class with one of those kids or being a teacher in a class with one of those kids?” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable having them in a school where my stepson has a history of being bullied and they’re at that same school.”
To McCarthy and other community members who spoke to BuzzFeed News, it feels like Glynn County police, the department that first investigated Arbery’s killing, is protecting the teens in the same way that they shielded Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William Bryan Jr. — the men who chased down and murdered Arbery. Cellphone video of the Feb. 23, 2020, incident showed the McMichaels shoot and kill Arbery as he was out for a run, but it wasn’t until after the video became public three months later and state investigators stepped in that the men were even arrested. (They were ultimately convicted of both murder and federal hate crimes and sentenced to life in prison.)
“That’s like a flashback to me, because it took 74 days before arrests was made in my nephew’s case,” Carla Arbery, an aunt of Ahmaud Arbery, told BuzzFeed News. “Social media’s so lit with everything that’s involving these young people and what happened to Trent. It shouldn’t take that long … for Trent to get some justice.”
Arbery, 53, said she agreed with one demonstrator who said during a recent rally for Lehrkamp on St. Simons that if the teens involved were Black, then they would have been arrested immediately.
“It wouldn’t have been days behind, weeks later,” Arbery said. “As soon as they seen that video they would have been, ‘OK, let’s go pick them up. Juvenile detention, here they come.’”
Cynthia Sykes, who went to school with Lehrkamp, told BuzzFeed News it doesn’t make sense to her that the police don’t have enough information to make an arrest at this point.
“You see people around here be arrested for much much less, without photo and video evidence,” said Sykes, 19, of Brunswick. “They’re going to present us with the same exact information that we already know when they do come down to making their arrests, so why are they allowed to be out living their life when Trent is having to go through rehabilitation?”
BuzzFeed News attempted to reach the families of five teens whose names are included on the list of those believed to be involved in the alleged abuse, including the Strother family, whose house was named by WSAV as the residence where at least one incident took place. The family owns and operates J.C. Strother Company, a longtime hardware store and lumber yard in the island’s popular Pier Village district. When reached by phone at the store, a relative read the following statement: “Strother Hardware would like to express our sincere sorrow over the recent events in our community. Our prayers are with everyone during this difficult time.”
Theawanza Brooks, another aunt of Ahmaud Arbery, said she believes what has happened — and what hasn’t happened — so far in this case fits a pattern she’s seen with how the criminal justice system doesn’t actually work for people who have experienced an injustice.
“I feel like Trent is facing an injustice here even though it’s not considered police brutality or anything like that,” said Brooks, 38, who has been organizing demonstrations in support of Lehrkamp. “His humanity, his rights, all of that was violated.”
She said she was particularly troubled that the March 21 incident was not the first time that Lehrkamp was allegedly abused at the friend’s house.
“I’ve learned in our community and with these officials that as long as we don’t see it … then nobody knows, so it can be swept under the rug,” Brooks said. “But when we see it, that’s when they respond.”
Community members have also criticized the police department for not making any mention of the incident to the public until the images of the alleged abuse started making the rounds on social media several days after the police investigation began. At the news conference last week, Jackson said authorities did not release any information initially “out of respect for the victim’s privacy,” adding that they believed it was an isolated incident and that there was no public threat. Still, even he acknowledged that if Lehrkamp hadn’t ended up at the hospital that night, the incidents may not have ever been reported.
“It’s a sad and misfortunate event,” Jackson said. “I want the rest of America … to understand that we, the citizens of Glynn County, are mostly very good people, hardworking people. This is an isolated incident, and don’t judge Glynn County by one group of juvenile teens.”
But the lack of arrests or charges more than two weeks later sure does make the police department and the district attorney’s office “look like fools again,” McCarthy said.
“I am hoping that the reason this is taking so long is that they are doing the world’s greatest investigation … and that’s why there have not been arrests,” she said.
At this point, McCarthy believes the teens will ultimately be held accountable because of all the outrage in the community, and because the district attorney accused of mishandling the Arbery case is no longer in office.
Others are worried Lehrkamp’s case could still easily be willfully ignored.
“If that is the case, we will continue to protest,” Sykes said, “and we’ll take it wherever we need to take it to in order to get this situation taken care of.”
She added, “Like we seen with Ahmaud, his family had to fight to the death in order to get arrests made, and we’re seeing the same thing happening with Trent where the community’s having to come together.”
Sykes was among the hundreds who showed up for a prayer vigil outside the hospital where Lehrkamp was treated, and she also joined last weekend’s protest on the island. She said she's proud that the community has stepped up to rally around Lehrkamp and hopes that the support has comforted her former classmate in a big way.
“A lot of Glynn County has been losing sleep over this,” she said. “This boy has more family and friends than he could have ever imagined at this point.” ●