What Happened to Quawan Charles?

The tragic story of Quawan Charles.

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This Podcast is Executive Produced by Alecia Harris
Research Provided by Stephanie Moram
Writers: Alecia Harris and Stephanie Moram

Sources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DOJQdobXT3gVlXTLLk6dxLQ09qjkrl-kUtfCAMe2v-U/edit?usp=sharing

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Transcript

In the fall of 2020, the world was still sorting through the pieces of a worldwide pandemic, still holding their breath and trying to figure out a “new normal.” Everyone was struggling; everyone was burnt out and exhausted. But for one family in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, that struggle and exhaustion were about to dull compared to the heartbreak they were about to endure.

I’m Stephanie Moram and this is Wicked Ever After.

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Today, we find ourselves in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. It has a population of about 70,000 and is about two hours west of New Orleans. Iberia Parish is exactly as you are probably picturing: a southern town in Louisiana. It’s 56% land, and 44% is covered in marshland - home to various creatures that aren’t of the pet kind. 

It’s about 20 miles from here in Baldwin, where we find 15-year-old Quawan Charles. It appears that friends and family called Quawan, Bobby - but his legal name was Quawan, and multiple police reports and articles have referred to him by his legal name Quawan, so I will also do that here for this episode. 

Quawan loved the outdoors and his dog, who was always by his side. When Quawan was gifted the dog, he immediately named him “my baby,” which I think describes a lot about Quawan’s big heart. 

He was described as being a sweet and loving kid, always making everyone smile. He struggled a bit in school due to his dyslexia but had just started a new school that August. It’s unclear if he was still attending virtual school or if they had gone back to in-person school since it was still Covid times and many schools were doing virtual, but either way, he was new to that school that semester.

Quawan’s parents - Dad, Kenneth Jacko, and Mom, Roxanne Charles Nelson, were not living together, so he was bounced back and forth between their homes per their custody agreement. 

This might have been why he was the new kid, because perhaps one of the parents had moved to a different school district - again, this is just a guess and is unclear in the research. 

Being the new kid, Quawan was trying to find his way, figure out who he was, and fit into his new school with his new peers. So on October 30, 2020 - the night before Halloween- Quawan stayed with his dad, who lived in Baldwin. 

He planned to meet up with his friend Gavin Irving, who was a 17-year-old white kid from his new school. Having made plans, Gavin and his mom, Janet, picked Quawan up and drove him to their house to hang out around 3 pm. Quawan’s dad, Kenneth, was not at home at the time and was out shopping.

When Kenneth arrived home a couple of hours later, he found the dog, but there was no sign of Quawan. Alarm bells immediately went off for Kenneth because Quawan hadn’t said he was going anywhere, and he NEVER left My Baby, his dog, at home. 

He took him everywhere with him. However, Kenneth did remember that Roxanne, Quawan’s mother, was supposed to pick him up at 3 pm to take him to get his haircut. So, he assumed that perhaps they had had a miscommunication - as often happens with co-parenting- and the details had just gotten mixed up. 

But on that same token, he did find it odd he hadn’t heard from Roxanne since she usually communicated with him whenever she picked up Quawan.

By 7 pm, Kenneth hadn’t heard or seen Quawan, and his mom, Roxanne, also hadn’t heard or seen from him. She knew nothing of a haircut and had not picked up Quawan from the house. 

Starting to panic, Kenneth broke the lock on Quawan’s bedroom door and discovered the bedroom empty, with no sign of where Quawan might be. 

Now, at first, it seems like Quawan was doing what millions of teenagers do every day. Here was a 15-year-old kid who was new to school and had met an older friend who might be able to help him fit in with his new peers. 

He had lied to his dad about a hair appointment as a ruse to be able to hang out with this new friend, and he had locked his door to perhaps cover his tracks. But how long was Quawan planning on being gone, and why wasn’t he communicating or home yet? 

Most teenagers plan this out so they aren’t caught - but it seems like Quawan had been silent and gone too long not to be figured out, so it’s a little odd. 

After Kenneth found no evidence of Quawan’s whereabouts in his room, he called Roxanne, and they decided it was time to report Quawan missing to the Baldwin police. 

At that point, Quawan had been missing for about 4 hours, but since Kenneth wasn’t sure how long he had been gone while he was out shopping, it’s unclear how long he had actually been gone before it was reported.

Unfortunately, as we see a lot in these cases, the police didn’t take the report too seriously. They said he was probably out with a friend or went to a football game and would return home in no time. They didn’t seem to care too much about the fact he was a minor and wasn’t picking up his cell phone and refused to do anything for the panicked parents.

As a matter of fact, it took police three days to even begin to ping Quawan’s phone, something you think they could have and should have done the second his parents reported him missing. 

But again, we’ve seen this script before and what’s frustrating is just how long three days is when it comes to cases like this. Three minutes is crucial, let alone three days - in trying to locate someone and possibly save their life. So this continued inaction by police in some of these cases is really frustrating, in my opinion. 

During those three days, the local news was never notified, no search was started, and the local police took zero action. 

On November 3, a few days after Quawan went missing - the Iberia Parish police were made aware of Quawan’s disappearance. Remember Baldwin, where Quawan was, is about 20 minutes away from Iberia Parish, so this would have been the neighbouring district and it was normal for the police to alert the surrounding jurisdictions to be on the lookout for a missing person. 

Unlike the Baldwin police, Iberia Parish police immediately started a search for Quawan in their area. They started their search at his friend Gavin’s house, which was actually a mobile home. 

Now, it’s interesting to note here that the police learned from a third party that the Irvins had picked up Quawan that afternoon. It’s unclear when this was reported or who the third party was. 

So the Iberia Parish police spoke to Gavin and his mom Janet, and Janet reported that she did pick up Quawan around 3:00 and then brought them back to their mobile home. She went on to say that Gavin and Quawan smoked some weed in the house, but after a while, Quawan ran away from the house.

She didn’t give a reason why he had run away, so it was unclear if there was an argument or something between the two friends - she just gave zero reason just saying he ran away after smoking pot. Really odd.

She also apparently didn’t feel the need to call or contact Quawan’s parents. I mean, if you’re the adult and a 15-year-old kid just got high and randomly ran away from your house without saying where he was going and wasn’t even close to his home - you think you would call his parents after he didn’t return. 

And if she didn’t know the parents or have a way to contact them, you’d think she would have called the police at that point so they could find him and make sure he was okay.  

The only other thing I can think of is that she knew Quawan hadn’t told his parents about them, so maybe she was helping cover for him. I dunno. It seems like when he didn’t show back up, you’d be concerned enough to get help. It just seems super odd.

A few hours after police met with Janet and Gavin, they discovered Quawan’s body in a sugar cane field in Iberia Parish, which again is about 20 minutes away from his dad’s house. The fact he was found in a sugar cane field just makes me literally nauseous.

Quawan’s parents were informed, and an autopsy was performed. The sheriff shared the preliminary autopsy results with Kenneth and Roxanne and said muddy water was found in his airways and his lungs were hyperinflated, so the official cause of death was ruled a drowning. citing 

Okay, maybe Quawan had wandered off, was high, it got dark, and accidentally fell into a marsh and drowned. Might make sense - except for the fact that his body was found in a sugar cane field and not the marsh. 

And not just that. When Quawan’s parents were shown images of his body ( I assume for identification purposes), they saw that their son’s face had been brutally beaten. 

His teeth were cracked outside of his mouth, his lips had almost disappeared, and there were scratches all over his face, along with other wounds and abrasions. The autopsy also noted these, but the ME chalked those up to aquatic activity. 

So basically, what I’m gathering from this report is that the Medical Examiner is saying that Quawan drowned in a sugar cane field. Alligators or some other land-based aquatic creature (make that make sense) beat up his face after he drowned. This is the oddest thing I’ve ever heard. 

His body was found near a drainage ditch in this sugar cane field, and since it was November, which is Lousiana’s rainy season, there was about 2 feet of water in that ditch at the time. 

So it is believable that he could have had water in his lungs from that, but to drown in 2 feet of water is really hard to believe unless someone had like held your head down or something. Unless he was high, and he tripped and fell unconscious and drowned? But that doesn’t explain why his face looked the way it did.

After seeing the photos, Roxanne ran out of the room, unable to look at her son anymore. She said that it looked like Quawan had been tortured before his death - which is not how people who have drowned typically look. I’m not sure I have ever heard someone describe a drowning victim as looking like they had been tortured. 

One of the parent’s attorneys, Ronald Haley, a civil rights attorney, argued that the cause of death, “if he did in fact die of drowning, and we are saying that as an if - we are calling into question how that actually happened. Does someone who is 5 foot 6 typically drown in 2 feet of water? No, not unless there is another cause associated with that.”

On November 17, police released security footage of Gavin and Janet arriving at Kenneth’s house on the day they picked up Quawan. He was seen sitting on the curb, and when Gavin and Janet pulled up, they went to the back of the house, likely to play with the dog My Baby. This is likely because apparently Gavin was the one who gave the dog to Quawan.

So this is also interesting because Kenneth swore he had never heard of or met Gavin or Janet yet Gavin gave this dog to Quawan? Like how did this happen without him ever hearing of Gavin or his mom? Or maybe Quawan just never mentioned their name? Or maybe Roxanne knew them. I dunno, again just another really odd thing about this entire case. 

In the video, Gavin and Janet are seen returning to the front, and Quawan willingly got in their vehicle. So, there is no sign or evidence of kidnapping or any foul play at Quawan’s house. 

On November 24, police had still not classified Quawan’s case as a homicide. Still, they were investigating it as a homicide because that is protocol in “any case involving someone found deceased in this manner.” 

As part of their investigation, police were talking to people in Quawan’s life and those who had seen him in his last hours, as well as tracking their whereabouts in hopes of getting more information on what happened that night. 

This same week, the week of November 24,  Gavin and Janet were evicted from their mobile home. No reason was given. The family ordered an independent autopsy in hopes of figuring out what happened to their son. 

The independent autopsy, from a company called American Forensics, discovered evidence of a possible drowning, which they noted the first autopsy also reported. It stated that the Iberia Parish Coroner’s Office’s exam “appears thorough” but did not add anything to the original autopsy.

However, the exact manner of Quawan death was still in question. The independent report also indicated no sign of trauma sustained or disease suffered while the teen was still alive.

In February 2021, the official autopsy report was released, and it said that the injuries were consistent with drowning but did not state a cause of death, stating that it could not be determined if the amount of water found in his lungs was enough to drown him. 

Toxicology reports did find small amounts of marijuana and alcohol in his system, but nothing else was found. No prescription medications and no other drugs. It was also believed he had done some mushrooms, but those didn’t show up on the toxicology screens, so that is inconclusive. This disputes the Irvin family’s claim he was high on mushrooms.

This official autopsy report revealed that Quawan’s body was actually found naked, but there were no signs of SA- so that’s also bizarre.

It also noted that no pre-mortem trauma or natural disease was seen - so again, it seems they’re also implying that he drowned in the two feet of water. Then, some sort of animal came and beat up his face or damaged his face in some way but not any other part of his body. 

To make this case even weirder, a video was shown to the public of Quawan’s last known sighting and some eyewitness reports. He was seen on camera and by some eyewitnesses walking around alone and then crawling in culverts near the school that was in front of the sugar cane field. 

These witnesses said he became combative and threatened to kill himself after smoking marijuana and mushrooms. They indicated that it appeared Quawan was experiencing some sort of psychosis. 

So it would make sense that maybe Quawan was having some sort of mental health event and took off his clothes and maybe had a medical event, passed out, and fell face down into the water, causing him to drown. 

This doesn’t really explain the beating on his face, but maybe he hurt his face when he fell in the water, but it still doesn’t make sense that he sustained those injuries post-mortem, according to the autopsy results.

Toxicology results showed relatively low levels of alcohol and THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana, with no evidence of hallucinogenic mushrooms or synthetic substances.

The attorneys for the Charles family said in a statement they believe homicide remains the only reasonable explanation, and there has long been enough evidence to make an arrest in the death of Charles.

Chase Trichell, one of the attorney’s said “If the scientific explanation is drowning, then okay. Let’s narrow the focus to how Quawan came to drown in a sugar cane field. He was an able-bodied person before he was found face down in water that was ankle deep.”

The attorneys suggested the witnesses just mentioned are merely trying to protect themselves with their accounts of what happened as they are the last known people to see Charles alive.

So, everyone wanted answers as to what really happened. If he drowned of his own doing, the family deserves to know what led up to that drowning and what really went on with Quawan that night that led to his death. 

On February 9, 2021, 4 months after Quawan’s death, authorities arrested Janet Irvin on charges of failure to report a missing child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was arraigned on February 16th and held on bond. 

In April of that same year, her bond was reduced, and she was able to go home but with an ankle monitor, and she could have zero contact with Quawan’s family. 

The case has essentially gone cold. Quawan’s family has demanded accountability from local law enforcement, saying that law enforcement failed to act in the hours after they reported their son missing and that they believe his death could have been racially motivated. 

They criticize Baldwin police for not issuing an amber alert or news alert or even pinging his phone until three days later. 

“They could’ve done more. They didn’t. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do. Had they done what they were supposed to do, my son would be alive today. I feel because my son was Black, it didn’t matter to them.” Roxanne, Quawan’s mother said in an interview with ABC

The ACLU of Louisiana is joining the family in their calls for justice, “The disrespect and lack of transparency demonstrated by local officials in response to Bobby’s tragic and suspicious death is unacceptable. We join the family in demanding a full and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Bobby’s death.” Alanah Odoms Hebert of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a statement.

I couldn’t find any more updates on this case, and it doesn’t appear there have been any new developments or leads since the arrest of Janet Irvin back in 2021. Quawan’s parents are still demanding answers, and there is a petition and some other resources you can get involved in to help bring attention to this case. I will link all of that information in the description of this case.

The cases that bring no closure are so frustrating, especially when many believe his death was racially motivated.  I’m glad I can shine a light on Quawan, his life, and his death in hopes justice can be served and answers given to the family who miss him so much. 

Let me know your thoughts, theories and opinions on the case in the comments. Please hit the subscribe button on YouTube or whatever podcasting platform you are listening on. 

You can stay connected with me on Instagram and TikTok @thisisstephaniemoram. You can share your case suggestions with me by email steph@stephaniemoram.co or send me a DM on Instagram. 

Thank you so much for listening to Quawans story. Until next time, stay safe out there.