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Boot camp video
A videotape shows guards at a Panama City juvenile detention boot camp kneeing and hitting 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, who appeared to have gone limp while others restrained him.

Teen Who Died After Boot Camp Beating To Be Exhumed For Autopsy

POSTED: 1:37 pm EST March 3, 2006

The body of a 14-year-old boy who died supposedly died of natural causes after a violent altercation with guards at a Panama City juvenile boot camp will be exhumed so a new autopsy can be performed, it was announced Friday.

Martin Lee Anderson's body will be exhumed March 12, taken to Tampa and autopsied by Dr. Bernard Adams, Hillsborough County's medical examiner, and Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist who reviewed medical evidence in the slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evars. The two will perform the autopsy together but make separate reports.

"It's a crying shame -- we've got to go pull our son up again just to get the truth," said Robert Anderson, the boy's father.

The family is disputing the conclusion of Bay County's medical examiner, Dr. Charles Siebert, that the boy died from hemorrhaging caused by the usually benign condition of sickle cell trait, and not from the 30-minute altercation. He was kneed, struck and dragged by guards on his first day at the Bay County Sheriff's Office Boot Camp for juvenile offenders. Anderson eventually was taken to a Pensacola hospital where he died the next day, Jan. 6.

The ordeal was captured by a camp security camera and later broadcast nationally.

Gov. Jeb Bush has appointed Hillsborough State Attorney Mark A. Ober to review the evidence in his death. Ober has declined comment on the case, calling it an ongoing investigation. No guard has been arrested or fired.

Martin Lee Anderson
Martin Lee Anderson
Anderson died hours after he collapsed while doing push-ups, sit-ups, running laps and other exercises that were part of his admission to the camp. He entered the camp for a probation violation for trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were originally charged with stealing their grandmother's car from a church parking lot.

The security video shows as many as nine guards kneeing, hitting and dragging Anderson around the exercise yard. The sheriff's office has said the guards were trying to get Anderson to participate after he became uncooperative. No one has been charged or fired. Because of the controversy, Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen said he plans to close the camp in May. It is one of six in the state, run by counties under state supervision.

On Thursday, state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, and state Rep. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, questioned the original autopsy's findings and called for the immediate closing of all boot camps in the state and a full investigation into Anderson's death.


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