One year after a jury convicted a Jackson Police officer of manslaughter for the beating death of her brother, Bettersten Wade learned that another JPD officer had struck and killed her 37-year-old son, Dexter Wade, in an SUV and that the county had buried him an unmarked grave. Dexter Wade had been missing for nearly six months before the department informed his mother of her son’s fate.
“They had me looking for him all that time, and they knew who he was,” Wade told NBC News’ Jon Schuppe, who first reported this story on Wednesday.
The report says an off-duty corporal driving a JPD cruiser struck Dexter Wade as he was walking across Interstate 55’s southbound lane shortly before 8 p.m. on March 5, 2023, and that the coroner’s office later ruled the death an accident. The story does not name the officer who was driving the SUV and the Jackson Police Department offered no comment for this story.
Buried In A Pauper’s Field
Dexter Wade had a prescription bottle on him with his name on it at the time of his death, Schuppe reported. By March 9, investigators had confirmed his identity using the prescription bottle and by matching his fingerprints to ones they had on file from prior arrests. An investigator told NBC News that after attempting to contact Bettersten Wade unsuccessfully, he turned the information over to the Jackson Police Department so they could notify the family.
“Once we get that information I turn it over to police because it is their jurisdiction so that they can do the proper death notification,” NBC News quoted the Hinds County coroner’s office investigator, LaGrand Elliott, saying.
Jackson Police said Dexter Wade was walking across Interstate 55 on March 5, 2023, when an off-duty officer struck and killed him in an SUV. JPD did not inform his family about his death until Aug. 26, 2023. Courtesy Wade family
Bettersten Wade told NBC that she did not receive a call, but instead spent months in contact with JPD while trying to find her son and conducting her own search, including exploring
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