The families of two black women found dead under mysterious circumstances on the same day both say that police in Connecticut didn’t adequately investigate their deaths, and never notified their next-of-kin to inform them their relative had died.
Brenda Rawls, 53, died on December 12 after telling her family that she was going to the home of a male acquaintance down the road from her house in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
On the same day, 23-year-old Lauren Smith-Fields was found dead in her apartment. She had spent the night with a 37-year-old man she met on Bumble. A medical examiner later concluded it was an accidental fentanyl overdose and that she died of ‘acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl, promethazine, hydroxyzine and alcohol.’
Rawls’ cause of death hasn’t been confirmed, according to the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Now, both families are calling on the state of Connecticut to investigate their relatives’ deaths, saying that an internal report will not be fair or thorough enough.
Darnell Crosland, the attorney representing Smith-Fields’ family, said on Friday that he intends to sue the city over the police department’s ‘racially insensitive’ handling of her death.
Smith-Fields’ family said that, although Bridgeport police confiscated the dead woman’s phone, passport and $1,345 in cash from her home, they left glaring pieces of evidence untouched.
Both families attended a rally on Sunday, what would have been Smith-Fields’ 24th birthday.
Brenda Rawls, 53 (pictured), died on December 12 after telling her family that she was going to the home of a male acquaintance down the road from her in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Lauren Smith-Fields, 23 (pictured) was found dead by a 37-year-old man who she met on Bumble, and had spent the night with her at her apartment after their first date.
Both of the women’s families attended a rally on Sunday, which would have been Smith-Fields’ 24th birthday
Darnell Crosland (pictured), the attorney representing Smith-Fields’ family, said on Friday that he intends to sue the city over the police department’s ‘racially insensitive’ handling of her death
Smith-Fields’ family said she ‘didn’t do drugs,’ and the attorney representing the family, Darnell Crosland, said that a thorough-enough investigation wasn’t conducted to know for sure whether someone else drugged her.
Rawls’ sister, Dorothy Rawls Washington, said that she and her siblings talk on the phone or text every day. When Rawls didn’t respond to their texts and calls on December 12 and 13, she said, her family knew something was awry.
‘On the 14th, we said something’s wrong,’ she told NBC News. ‘So two of my sisters, my niece and my niece’s boyfriend walked down to that male’s house.’
When they asked the man, who Rawls had told them she would be seeing, what had happened to their sister, he told them that he couldn’t wake her up on December 12 and called police.
‘He gave me the clothing that she had on and her shoes,’ said Angela Rawls Martin, another of Rawls’ sisters. ‘I don’t understand why that was left behind.’
On Monday, the office announced that Smith-Fields (pictured) died of ‘acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl, promethazine, hydroxyzine and alcohol’
Smith-Fields’ family, pictured, are also frustrated with how local police are handling the case, alleging the detective told them to stop contacting him and was uninterested in pursuing Smith-Field’s date as a suspect, whom they described as an ‘older white man’
Washington told the outlet that ‘nobody ever notified us that she died,’ and that after they found out on their own, they needed to ‘do our own investigation and find out where she was.’
One of the Rawls sisters called a funeral home to ask if her body was there, but it wasn’t – a director at that funeral home advised the family to call the state medical examiner’s office, where they found her body.
‘The next time we saw our sister, she was in a funeral home,’ Washington said. ‘They never took any opportunity to look for next of kin.’
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The family sent four letters enumerating their complaints to Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim and Police Chief Rebeca Garcia – neither party has responded.
In the letters, Martin writes that she spoke to a Bridgeport Police Department sergeant multiple times – and that he said that he was unsure whether police searched Rawls’ apartment or the residence she was found, saying that it wasn’t written in their police report and that they had ‘dropped the ball’ on the investigation.
She was given the name of a detective to contact, who she said has yet to respond to four or five messages that she’s left.
‘They treated my sister Brenda like she was a Jane Doe,’ Washington said. ‘Like they found her on the side of the road with no identification. They have no respect.’
Smith-Fields’ loved ones are also frustrated with how local police are handling the case, alleging the detective told them to stop contacting him and was uninterested in pursuing Smith-Field’s date as a suspect, whom they described as an ‘older white man.’
Smith-Fields’ family said that, although Bridgeport police confiscated the dead woman’s phone, passport and $1,345 in cash from her home, they left glaring pieces of evidence untouched
‘When I asked the officer about the guy, he said he was a very nice guy and they weren’t looking into him anymore. It was almost like he was sticking up for him and it seemed weird to hear that from a detective,’ her brother Lakeem Jetter told NBC Connecticut.
‘He told me directly on the phone to stop calling him and hung up in my face, it was just like total disrespect, like that’s what you tell a family that’s going through grief and trying to find answers?’
The 37-year-old man, Matthew LaFountain, told police that he awoke to find Smith-Fields unresponsive with a nosebleed.
LaFountain has remained mum since Lauren Smith-Fields died more than six weeks ago, but his lawyer Peter Karayiannis offered brief remarks a day after the Bridgeport Police Department launched a criminal investigation into her death.
The ‘older white man’ who was on a Bumble date with 23-year-old Connecticut Lauren Smith-Fields before she was found dead after a night of drinking has been revealed as Matthew LaFountain, a 37-year-old design engineer she knew for three days. His lawyer says he maintains his innocence
‘My client has been cooperating with the authorities since Day 1,’ Karayiannis told DailyMail.com in a phone interview.
He referenced the medical examiner’s report, which found that Smith-Fields’ death was an accident resulting from her exposure to a cocktail of drugs, including fentanyl, washed down with alcohol.
‘My client maintains his innocence,’ the attorney added. He also expressed his condolences to the woman’s family.
Smith-Fields’ brother, Lakeem Jetter, told Rolling Stone that the family found a used condom in the trash, lubricant, bloody sheets on her bed and an unidentified pill in the unit.
‘The first night we saw cups there, flipped plates and the lube. The cops didn’t take any of the cups to test the liquor,’ said Jetter. ‘There was a big stain of blood in the middle of her bed, with streaks going to the right side.’
Smith-Fields’ brother, Lakeem Jetter, told Rolling Stone that the family found a used condom in the trash, lubricant, bloody sheets on her bed and an unidentified pill in her apartment where she died, pictured
The Bridgeport Police Department has said that a criminal investigation has been opened in light of the medical examiner’s Monday report on Smith-Fields’ cause of death. On Monday, Ganim said the department’s Office of Internal Affairs will investigate whether her death was properly handled.
Maria Pereira, a Democratic Bridgeport City Council member who district includes the residences of both deceased women, said that she didn’t know that both women died on the same day and both of their cases were handled by the same police precinct until the day of the rally.
Pereira said told NBC News that there were an ‘awful lot of similarities’ between the two cases, although she did not suggest that the two deaths were related. Both women were black, she noted, and died at unexpectedly young ages. Both were on dates with men who told police that they found the women dead in the morning when they woke up, and neither woman’s parents was notified of their deaths by police.
Neither crime scene was properly secured and processed for forensic evidence, and both families said that the Bridgeport Police Department treated them without compassion.
‘So now what I see here is a pattern with the Bridgeport PD,’ she said.
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