WYANDOTTE COUNTY, KS – Charles L. Adair was a 50-year-old Black man. He was arrested on July 4 on misdemeanor traffic warrants. By the night of July 5, he was bloodied and dead inside the Wyandotte County jail.
The autopsy details how a jail cop violently dug his knee into Adair’s back and killed him. Adair suffocated, his ribs were broken, and his chest was fractured. There was bleeding in his back and shoulders. His eyes showed the telltale hemorrhages of suffocation.
The coroner ruled his death a homicide caused by “mechanical asphyxia.”
But you would know none of this if you relied on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
The KBI’s “official press release” following their “official investigation” was a deliberate act of deception. It made no mention of deputies kneeling on Adair’s back. It made no mention of the broken bones, the bleeding, or the suffocation marks. Instead, the KBI — the very agency charged with investigating every in-custody death in Kansas — told the public their agents “did not observe any obvious signs of physical injury.” That is not an oversight but a brazen lie. It is a fraudulent press release crafted to erase the role of Wyandotte County jail cops in Adair’s horrifying murder, to obscure the violence, and to absolve the killers under the cover of official language.
But the deception didn’t stop there. In its final update, the KBI went even further, attempting to shift blame onto Adair himself. They listed “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” and “hepatic cirrhosis due to chronic alcoholism” as “contributory factors” in his death.
To be clear: there is no evidence that Charles was an alcoholic, nor does it matter if he was. He did not suffocate because of liver disease. He suffocated because a deputy forced a knee into his back and crushed the breath out of him.
This tactic is as familiar as it is despicable. The state has a long record of lying to the public after killing Black people. When Eric Garner was strangled to death by NYPD, the medical report initially noted “no damage to the windpipe,” a bureaucratic way of minimizing what everyone saw on camera as he cried out, “I can’t breathe.” When George Floyd was strangled to death for over 8 minutes on camera in front of the world in Minneapolis, the first police statement described his death as a “medical incident during police interaction.”
Time and again, “official” police stories erase the violence, blame the victim’s body, and sanitize murder into paperwork.
The Timeline They Tried to Bury
On July 5, around 8:30 p.m., Adair was treated in the jail’s infirmary for a leg wound. Deputies say he “caused a disturbance” on the way back. They handcuffed him, forced him into a chair, and forced him into his cell. There, they shoved him onto a bunk. One officer drove a knee into his back. At 8:37 p.m., staff called medical personnel. At 9:19 p.m., Charles was pronounced dead.
The KBI claimed their agents “did not observe any obvious signs of physical injury.” That statement collapses under even the most basic scrutiny. The autopsy makes the reality undeniable: broken ribs, a fractured chest, internal bleeding, and suffocation hemorrhages in his eyes. These are not subtle and certainly not invisible.
There is virtually no other way to interpret this than that KBI explicitly lied, engaged in an official cover-up, then produced a fraudulent press release designed to hide what jail cops did to brother Adair.
The Bigger Truth
Charles Adair’s death is unfortunately not an isolated event. It is part of the everyday fascism we see in the United States, a country that cages more people than any other in the history of the human species, and where Missouri/Kansas jails and prisons are quite literally concentration camps. In Vernon County, it is routine. In Wyandotte County, it is routine. The conditions are not aberrations but instead are at the very root of the incarceration system itself.
And when officials lie in press releases, it is because they know the truth: the system cannot survive if people see it clearly. Under a fascist presidential regime and a Department of Justice that launders murder into paperwork, justice will never be delivered by the state. It will only be won by The People.
Refuse the Cover-Up
Charles should be alive. He should be with his family, laughing, eating, living. Instead, he was choked, brutalized, and killed over traffic warrants. The state killed him, then lied about how it happened. We will not repeat their script and we will certainly not bury the truth with him.
Wyandotte County jail cops killed a Black man named Charles L. Adair. Then they lied to our faces about it.
Remembering Charles L. Adair
Charles’s family and loved ones offered a picture of a man whose life was defined by love, humor, and connection. In his obituary, they described him as “a man whose laughter and warmth were as boundless as his love for family and friends.”
He was a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, and he carried a deep appreciation for music. Family members called him a “proud and doting uncle” to his nieces and nephews, a dedicated father to his three children, and a brother with an unshakable bond to his siblings.
“To know Charles was to laugh,” the obituary reads. “His sense of humor was magnetic, and his natural ability to connect with others made him unforgettable. Whether he was cracking a joke or offering a word of encouragement, his spirit lifted those around him.”
