Shona Garner-White, the mother of Alegend Jones, a 17-year-old girl who passed away while in the custody of a Tennessee group home, is seeking answers regarding the details of her daughter’s death.

Witnesses shared with the family and its representatives that male counselors beat the girl, a claim the facility vehemently denies.

Garner-White has hired civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump to get to the bottom of the “suspicious circumstances” surrounding what happened at the Youth Villages Group Home on the Bartlett, Tennessee, campus just outside of Memphis on Nov. 16. That day Jones was rushed to the hospital from the facility because of a “medical emergency” and died the next day from her mysterious injuries.

The Shelby County Medical Examiner has not released the results of Jones’ autopsy.

Crump said last week, he spoke to the doctors and was told that Jones probably died from a “brain bleed.”

Now, the family has retained a forensic pathologist to perform an independent autopsy. The goal, according to the lawyer, is to put “the puzzle together to get to the truth so we can get justice for this child — this 17-year-old child.”

Representatives from Youth Villages have not released details about what happened but confirmed that something occurred on one of its campuses on the day Jones was taken to the hospital.

“A young person in our care experienced a medical emergency. We do not know the cause of the medical emergency,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

Officials further stated they are following confidentiality laws about children receiving mental and behavioral health care and are unable to comment on specific cases, adding, “There were no abusive or otherwise inappropriate interactions directed toward the young person.”

Crump says that is not true.

“Alegend, a 17-year-old female, was told to remove her clothes while she was at the health department. She did not want to take off her clothes in front of two male counselors,” he said at a Nov. 29 news conference in Memphis.

He further alleged that the girl was beaten by the male counselors and that police were only called after one of the counselors “body slammed” her.

From there, the family says, the girl was returned to the group home, where “It is alleged that over a dozen counselors at Youth Villages assaulted and battered this teenage child,” said Crump.

“We don’t know if there’s video that captured the interactions between the counselors, who were supposed to be trained to deal with troubled youth, and this teenager, Shona’s baby,” Crump continued. “But what we do know is whatever transpired ended up with the neurologists telling Shona that they believed the cause of death is that she died from a brain bleed.”

Her mom, a Chicago resident who sent the sixth of her 12th children to the Tennessee group home, said she was baffled by how an institution that was supposed to help her get Jones on track for a brighter future would be at the center of her premature demise.

“I sent her to Youth Villages to get help, and now they’re sending my baby back in a casket. Youth Villages is supposed to help my kid. I’m never supposed to bury my kid. My kid is supposed to bury me,” Garner-White said to reporters at the news conference.

The mother sent her daughter, who was a sexual assault survivor, to the facility to assist her in dealing with mental wellness issues two months before the tragedy. Jones was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, manic depression, and bipolar disorder due to a sexual assault that occurred when she was 14.

She was also processing her father’s death by suicide.

“I asked DCFS for help because my daughter had mental health issues and we agreed that I would keep custody, they would do guardianship,” Garner-White said.

Jones’ death is under investigation by the Bartlett Police Department and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

“The Department of Children’s Services is saddened any time there is loss of life involving a youth. We can confirm an investigation has commenced, and we are working alongside our law enforcement partners on this case,” the agency said in a statement.