As speculation and rumor abound in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, whose spine was severed while in police custody, the Baltimore Sun puts one rumor to bed: Gray did not undergo surgery for a spinal injury from a car accident shortly before his arrest, as was reported by The Fourth Estate on Tuesday.The Sun examined the Howard County court records which were supposed to prove the car-accident story and found that they “had nothing to do with a car accident or a spine injury.” They were connected to a case about exposure to lead paint.
Sometime in the ’90s, Gray and his sisters were found to have “levels of lead in their blood nearly double” the state’s definition of lead poisoning. In Gray’s neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park “more than 7 percent of children under 6 had elevated levels of lead in their blood in 2012.”
In a way this rumor came almost pre-debunked, as the lead-paint lawsuit was covered in a Sun article from April 23.
