The spirit and memory of Lennon Lacy, the 17-year-old West Bladen student who died two years ago, just isn’t being allowed to rest in peace.

Lacy died on Aug.29, 2014. His body was found hanging from a swing set near his home in a Bladenboro trailer park in the early morning hours, and the circumstances surrounding his death have been the subject of debate and unanswered questions right from the start.

But since the high-school junior was found, there have been hundreds upon hundreds of man-hours dedicated to answering those questions — from the grassroots level of the Bladenboro Police Department to the Bladen County District Attorney’s Office to the N.C. Medical Examiner’s Office to the State Bureau of Investigation and finally to the United States Justice Department’s FBI.

The conclusions at every level have been the same. There has not been any evidence to support that Lacy’s death was connected with a homicide, and therefore has been ruled a suicide. Case closed.

It is understandable that the family would want answers to the myriad of questions that have arisen over the past two years. But it has become obvious to us that many of the questions being asked simply cannot be answered.

But a petition now online calling for the investigation to be re-opened at the federal level thinks those answers are there.

So who is it that continues to push for answers when there apparently are none? Is it the state chapter f the NAACP, led by the Rev. William Barber, who has stubbornly called for the “truth” and doggedly supported the Lacy family?Is it the black community that simply cannot accept that one of their own would take his own life in such a public way? Or is the fuel for the ongoing distrust of anything governmental, such as the investigations, much bigger and far-reaching?

The answer is probably a good deal of all three.

In some circles, the young Lacy has become a sort of martyr and joined the faces of the divisive “Black Lives Matter” heartbeat of the black community — and that’s a shame, because it means he will be remembered for his death and not his life.

The signatures on that online petition climbed to more than 640 as of Sunday and shows an apparent goal of 1,000 — which appears iffy at best.

Two of the comments included with the petition stand out to us:

— One stated “justice needs to be served for the family” — which makes us wonder what “justice” they are looking for, since the conclusion of several investigations all came back the same.

— A second comment disparaged all of the investigations, claiming the investigators “are all members of the KKK.”

While this petition has little chance of persuading the FBI to reopen the case, it’s only real result is to keep the family, community and county from allowing Lennon Lacy to rest in peace and the rest of us to move on.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“At some point you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart, but not in your life.” (Unknown)