Parents seek answers after learning about daughter's mysterious death at college through Facebook

James Jackson and Judith Brogdon, Jasmine Benjamin's stepfather and mother.

Two heartbroken parents want answers from a Georgia university after they learned about their daughter’s on-campus death through Facebook.

Nursing student Jasmine Benjamin, 17, was found dead earlier this month on a couch in her dorm’s common room at Valdosta State University. Her parents told CBS Atlanta police said she had been dead for at least 12 hours.



“That’s the most disturbing part of it,” Benjamin’s stepfather James Jackson said. “Aren’t there RAs? What kind of school is this that they don’t know someone’s laying on the couch, to go check on them after a certain number of hours?”

After finding Benjamin’s body on Nov. 18, school officials contacted police, who reached out to Benjamin’s parents in Lawrenceville, Ga. — but not before a family friend forwarded them a Facebook post about their daughter’s death, The Associated Press reported.

Benjamin’s death is being investigated as a homicide.

Campus police are cooperating in the investigation by interviewing students who may have clues about what happened to Benjamin, VSU Communications Director Thressea Boyd told the Daily News.

A Facebook page has also been set up for students to provide tips.

Jackson described his stepdaughter as a “very, very, very smart girl” who wanted to become a nurse like her mother, Judith Brogdon, he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The family moved to Georgia from Queens, N.Y. five years ago.

Jackson and Brogdon, who have hired a private investigator, said police originally told them Benjamin died of natural causes.

“To find out it was a homicide and that somebody actually killed our daughter changed everything,” they told the newspaper.

Police found no initial signs of harm on Benjamin’s body and haven’t said why her death is being investigated as a homicide. They’re awaiting autopsy results.

culled from NyDaily News