The families of Lauren Smith-Fields and Brenda Lee Rawls are still reeling from the sudden deaths of their loved ones, who died on the same day in the same Connecticut neighborhood in December 2021.
Now, they want answers and to hold law enforcement accountable for how they handled the investigations.
Smith-Fields’ family recalled detective Kevin Cronin, who works for the Bridgeport Police Department, being rude and dismissive in their conversation with him regarding her death.
“He was horrible. He told us to stop calling his phone, that the guy [Smith-Fields went on a date with] that night was a good guy, leave it alone, just to stop calling his phone, just talking disrespectful. It was crazy,” Lakeem Jetter, Smith-Fields’ brother, told Inside Edition Digital.
Blavity reported that 23-year-old Smith-Fields was found unconscious inside her apartment on Dec. 12, 2021, and died days later. She reportedly went on a date with an unknown older white man she met on the dating app Bumble.
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When the two returned to the young woman’s apartment, he notified the police of Smith-Fields’ condition and was free to leave. However, the police never followed up with the man or viewed him as a suspect. Instead, they told the family he was a nice guy and found no foul play.
“From my review of the records, he called 911,” Roderick Porter, the new Bridgeport chief of police, told Inside Edition Digital. Cronin’s records indicated the same, he said. “That he arrived on the scene and he investigated, as they’re supposed to do when they respond to a scene like that.”
According to the autopsy report, Smith-Fields’ cause of death was ruled “accidental.” She had several drugs in her system, including fentanyl, per the outlet.
On the same day as Smith-Fields’ death, Brenda Lee Rawls, 53, was found dead after visiting a neighbor she previously dated. At the time, her sister, Dorothy Rawls Washington, said Rawls had gone to the man’s home on Dec. 11, Blavity reported. When her family hadn’t heard from her in several days, they went to the man’s house, only to discover Rawls had died two days before.
This is 53yo Brenda Rawls she died on the same day as Lauren smith- fields in Bridgeport Connecticut her cause of death has not yet been determined but Brenda told her family she was going out with a man she met online. 2days went by that they didn’t hear from her… 👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/js2LS0bOcb
— 𝐵𝑒𝓎𝑜𝓃𝒸𝑒 𝒮 𝒟𝒶𝓋𝒾𝓈 (@LADDY__BEE) January 31, 2022
The medical examiner ruled her cause of death was natural causes, specifically related to heart disease and diabetes, Inside Edition Digital reported. However, Rawls’ family was also unhappy with how Bridgeport Police investigated her death.
“The case was never about if she had illness or not,” Washington told Inside Edition Digital. “The case is specifically about the fact how they treated my sister like a Jane Doe in death, how they violated her civil rights, how they violated the family’s civil rights without even notifying us.”
She continued, “And we want to know what happened that night, who came to get her, what police officer was there. Was she taken by an ambulance or what? Why didn’t they question the guy that was there? Why wasn’t there tape around? You find somebody dead in your bed in the morning. Who did he call? What about the 911 tapes?”
Both families share a common goal in their loved ones’ cases: to hold law enforcement accountable in their investigations and demand justice for their deaths.
Darnell Crosland, an attorney representing both families, told Inside Edition Digital that police officers “have body cams, and they tap the body cams as they walk in. That has not been released.”
Crosland and the families said police never followed up with the two men who last saw Smith-Fields and Rawls alive.
“They didn’t go to the gentleman’s house that she was found at. They didn’t try to trace anything to see if there’s anything nefarious that happened. They just wrote it off like an accident,” Washington said.
The families received good news in the spring of 2022 when local lawmakers passed a bill requiring police to notify the victim’s family within 24 hours of their death, per Blavity.
While the families continue fighting for their loved ones, they believe authorities would have handled their cases differently if they were white women.
“I would say sadly, in many respects, sometimes that is true. Sometimes it’s perception. Sometimes it is reality. But not just Black women, but Black people in general,” Porter told Inside Edition Digital. “But that’s a sad commentary on where we are, but I can say that’s something that I would not tolerate, something that I don’t condone, something that we are really trying to make sure it doesn’t occur again.”
