OurTupelo

PETAL — More than three decades after 17-year-old Angela Freeman disappeared in Petal, a new Mississippi law is changing how law enforcement agencies respond when someone is reported missing. 

The law, passed as House Bill 377 and effective July 1, prohibits law enforcement agencies from requiring a waiting period before accepting a credible missing person report. It also establishes requirements for investigating missing and unidentified people. 

Freeman was last seen at a Pizza Hut in Petal on Sept. 10, 1993. Her case remains unsolved as the 33rd anniversary of her disappearance approaches, illustrating the challenges investigators face as a disappearance stretches from an initial search into a decades-old cold case.

When someone goes missing 

The Forrest County Sheriff’s Office begins investigating as soon as it receives a missing person report, according to Jamie Humphrey, major of operations at the sheriff’s office. 

“There’s a bad misconception that people have now, especially with the new law, that you must wait so many hours to report someone missing,” he said. 

The law also prohibits agencies from requiring a missing person’s next of kin to appear in person before an investigation can begin. 

Deputies are dispatched to where the person was last seen and begin determining what may have happened. Humphrey said the circumstances could include a runaway, missed curfew, kidnapping, medical emergency or possible foul play. 

Federal law requires law enforcement agencies to enter information about certain missing young people into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center within two hours of receiving a report. Humphrey said the quicker it’s input, the faster that information is available to other law enforcement agencies. 

How the search unfolds

Investigators look at who is missing, when the person was last seen and what may have led to the disappearance. 

“You’ve got to ascertain first what the facts and circumstances centered around that person initially,” said Rusty Keyes, assistant vice president of public safety and chief of police at the University of Southern Mississippi. 

Investigators may develop what law enforcement calls a victimology, examining the person’s habits, relationships, frequently visited places and other details that could provide clues. 

A physical search can expand beyond law enforcement to include firefighters, emergency medical personnel, volunteers, family members and community organizations. Teams may use drones, horses, four-wheelers, aircraft and infrared technology. 

The search for answers can continue after an active search ends. Meaghan Good, founder and administrator of the Charley Project, maintains a public database of cold missing person cases that can include details not found on traditional missing person flyers, such as identifying tattoos. 

Good said keeping publicly accessible information can generate attention and potential leads years after a disappearance. 

“If the missing person’s case isn’t in the database to begin with, then no one knows how to look,” Good said. 

When a case goes cold 

As time passes without answers, investigators face new obstacles. Witnesses become difficult to locate and memories fade. 

“The older the case is, obviously, you get into situations where witnesses or suspects have died,” Humphrey said. 

Humphrey began working on Freeman’s case in 2016 as part of a cold case unit, reviewing previous investigative work and reinterviewing people connected to her disappearance. 

That review help investigators uncover new information and prompted new questions previous investigators had not asked, Humphrey said. Multiple agencies have worked on Freeman’s case, and leads continue to be reviewed. 

“I can’t tell you how many hundreds of people have been interviewed just from us,” Humphrey said. 

Technology can give investigators options that were unavailable when Freeman disappeared. Keyes said investigative genetic genealogy can help in some cold cases when suitable DNA evidence is available, but Humphrey said newer technology does not replace traditional investigative work. 

“Use the old stuff, the old ways. That still works,” Humphrey said. 

Freeman’s family will mark 33 years since her disappearance with a remembrance ceremony at 6 p.m. Sept. 12 at Hinton Park in Petal. 

For investigators and families, an unsolved disappearance can have an impact long after the initial search ends. 

“There’s cases that stand out in me that hurt,” Keyes said. “Maybe I didn’t get to bring someone home.” 

“When someone has been missing for like decades, the wound never closes,” Good said. “These people, they will be afflicted by this for the rest of their lives until the case is solved and perhaps even afterwards.” 

Let’s look back at Mississippi’s first big college football weekend. And let’s start with No. 9 Ole Miss, which survived No. 24 Louisville, 41-38, in a thriller that began with a first half defensive struggle that turned into a second half shootout.

“Hotty Toddy” is the usual Ole Miss refrain after a hard-fought victory, especially a nationally televised win over a really good team. But that wasn’t the case Sunday night in Nashville when the most audible Rebel reaction was a collective, “Whew!”

“Whew” because Ole Miss survived a two-turnover deficit, first half offensive stumbles, a second half defensive collapse, several crucial injuries and what coach Pete Golding correctly called “a really good Louisville team.” Golding was also dead-on when he told the post-game interviewer, “We got a lot of work to do.”

Better to do that extensive work with a 1-0 record than with the alternative that suddenly became quite likely when Louisville erased a 38-24 lead in a four-minute span late in the fourth quarter. Bottom line: Trinidad Chambliss, the Rebels’ fearless quarterback, wasn’t going to let the Rebels lose. He threw for 336 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 50 yards and another touchdown. 

And, when it mattered most after Louisville tied the game with a minute, 28 seconds remaining, Chambliss led the Rebels 40 yards against the clock to set up Lucas Carneiro’s 48-yard, game-winning field goal as time expired.

Facing third and six at his own 40 with 42 seconds remaining, Chambliss cooly hit tight end Caleb Odom with an 18-yard dart over the middle to extend the drive. Odom, who began his college career at Alabama, also caught a touchdown, while Deuce Alexander, a rocket of a wide receiver, caught two touchdowns.

Most concerning for Golding has to be the injuries to key players, such as preseason All American running back Kewan Lacy, who missed nearly all the second half with what appeared to be a leg bruise. The Rebels also lost defensive lineman Kam Franklin, who was a force before leaving the game, linebacker Keaton Thomas, guard Delano Townsend and offensive tackle Tommy Kinsler. The nature and extent of their injuries are not known. 

The Rebels can probably manage this Saturday’s home opener with Charlotte, a 43-41 loser to The Citadel, without those guys but then comes you-know-who on Sept. 19. One man’s opinion: The LSU team I watched clobber Clemson 51-10 Saturday night would beat the Ole Miss team I watched Sunday night by two touchdowns or more. Yes, much work to do.

Mississippi State 62, UL-Monroe 13

The Bulldogs did what they were supposed to do against an inferior team, putting up other-worldly offensive numbers in the process. State gained 762 yards of total offense, just a smidgeon under a first down per play.

It could have been worse if State coach Jeff Lebby had a sadistic streak. He called off the Dogs early. Kamario Taylor wasn’t as sharp as these eyes have seen him before, so he threw for only 354 yards and four touchdowns without an interception and ran for 59 more and another score. He is going to win some big games for State.

Taylor has more help this season with a deep pool of running backs and receivers and an offensive line that for one night, at least, was dominating. We will see just how much they have improved Saturday. That’s when the Dogs venture into Big Ten country to play at Minnesota, which won seven games and a bowl last year and started the season with a 59-7 crushing of Eastern Illinois.

Both Minnesota and State take a huge step up in competition.

Southern Miss 49, Alcorn State 3

Yes, the Golden Eagles dominated an out-manned team, but they surely looked sharp in doing so. When you consider what little Blake Anderson inherited and the fact that he brought more than 70 new players into the program, his team was crisp and efficient.

“We did what we were supposed to do,” is the way Anderson put it.

Anderson’s teams usually do. He’s been there before, done this and done it well. He won two Sun Belt championships at Arkansas State. He won one Mountain West championship at Utah State. He had taken nine of the 10 college teams he has coached to bowl games.

Despite missing much of preseason practice with a bruised thumb on his throwing hand, quarterback Ethan Hampton played well after a rusty start. He isn’t the most mobile guy but he has a strong arm and once quarterbacked Northern Illinois to a victory at Notre Dame. So there’s that. A fleet of running backs with varied skills ran well. And the USM defense harassed talented Alcorn quarterback Jaylon Tolbert, intercepting him four times. Kobi Albert, a newcomer at cornerback, swiped three of those.

What Anderson had to say after Saturday night’s win was this: “Now it gets real.”

Yes, it does. Southern Miss will be a decided underdog Saturday at Auburn. 

Jackson State 66, Edward Waters 14

This was the most one-sided matchup of all. Jackson State out-gained the Division II visitors 704-231 and could have scored far more. The question is: Why? Why play this game?

In fact, Edward Waters president A. Zachary Faison Jr. asked himself that same question afterward, and then apologized to players, coaches and fans for allowing the game to be scheduled. You don’t see or hear that every day.

“I owe an apology because the position we placed you in Saturday was not your doing and it was not your coaches’,” Faison wrote in a statement on social media. “The decision was mine.”

Faison indicated he scheduled the game because of a $60,000 guaranty Jackson State paid Edward Waters to make the trip from Jacksonville, Florida. The road trip cost approximately $30,000 in travel expenses, meaning the game netted the Florida school only $30,000.

Faison said a lot more, but I’ll paraphrase. He said Edward Waters will never play a Division I team again. He said 30 grand isn’t nearly a large enough pay day for such a terrible beating.

Jackson State plays host to Tuskegee, another D-II school, albeit a much better football team. Tuskegee defeated Fort Valley State 24-23 last Saturday in Mobile, Alabama.

Since losing his teeth, Herbert Griffith has tried just about every smoothie on the market that his older sister could find for him. 

Griffith lost most of his teeth after being diagnosed with oral cancer in 2022. Radiation treatment, which targets cancer cells but can kill healthy ones in the process, took the rest. 

“They just crumbled up,” said his sister Beverly Cole, who has helped manage Griffith’s care since his tooth pain first alerted them that something was wrong. Griffith has difficulty speaking, and Cole, a retired medical manager, often steps in to help him communicate. She has spent much of her career and retirement as a caretaker, first as a hospice worker, then for her mother, and now for Grffith. 

To her, he’s just “Herbie.”

Traditional dental implants require drilling into the jawbone to screw in individual teeth, but Griffith’s cancer-riddled bones made that procedure impossible. There wasn’t enough bone to support them. Instead, he became the second candidate in Mississippi for a double jaw subperiosteal, or “on-the-bone” surgery.

Over several months, doctors used advanced scanning techniques to map out the shape of the jaw. Then Griffith’s care team worked with a medical technology company to 3D print a robust scaffold made of titanium alloy that sits on top of what remains of his jawbone. After checking the scaffold’s fit, the team of plastic and oral surgeons can mount a full set of teeth, giving the patient a functional jaw in the same day. 

The medical center’s dental school is the only in-state center that performs this procedure, said Dr. Ignacio Velasco, an oral and dental surgeon at the medical school and one of Griffith’s doctors. It is among a handful of medical centers nationwide that have both the infrastructure to take care of patients and the multidisciplinary team of doctors who can perform it. 

With this capability, Velasco said he can keep seeing his oral cancer patients for the whole recovery process. Before, many of these patients endured without a working jaw. 

“Now, patients don’t need to leave Mississippi to get a full treatment for their cancer and finally the dental reconstruction,” he said.

A complicated procedure

Dr. Pasha Shakoori, a plastic surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction, works on these surgeries at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. It’s a complex procedure to pull off, he said. For each patient case, Shakoori said he works with a dentist, an oral surgeon, and an ear nose and throat doctor. 

Patients benefit from the speed of the process, Shakoori said. For traditional implants, patients have to wait three to six months for the metal posts to heal before they can get each individual tooth screwed into place. For a full set of teeth, that is time-consuming and expensive, because insurance often only partially covers dental implants. 

In 2025, the dentistry school team started offering single jaw subperiosteal implants and completed their first double jaw case in February 2026. Double jaw surgery is more difficult, Shakoori said, because there are literally more moving parts. 

“If you’re operating on both, now you’re changing everything.”

A complicated procedure did not surprise Griffith after a difficult medical journey that included an initial misdiagnosis. When the tooth pain first started, Griffith’s dentist cycled him through antibiotics for three months before Cole booked him an appointment with a Hattiesburg-based oral surgeon. 

“Dr. York looked at it and he said, ‘That’s cancer,’” Cole recounted.

By the time surgery was an option, Griffith’s jaw had deteriorated so much his doctors needed to reconstruct his jaw from skin and bone from his leg before they could screw in the titanium scaffold. Then, in a rare occurrence, the temporary plastic scaffold broke during his recovery and Griffith had to go through the multi-hour surgery again.

“He’s really been through a lot,” Cole said of her brother. “He’s a trooper.”

Still, while in the waiting room for a follow-up appointment, accompanied by Cole and his girlfriend, Griffith was positive about his procedures. 

“They’re going well enough,” he said. “Let me tell you, I have my faith.”

Cole is now trying out different foods with her brother, who eats slowly and carefully, making sure each morsel is soft enough to swallow. Just the other day, she said, “Herbie” was able to chew and swallow one of his favorite desserts: a slice of apple tart. 

For a brief two-year period from 2008 until 2010, Democrats, despite not having won a presidential election in Mississippi since 1976, held three of the state’s four U.S. House seats.

But Mississippi’s 2026 U.S. House races are happening in November against the backdrop that since 2010 Republicans have held three of the four seats.

In 2010, Democrats Travis Childers, who held the 1st District seat in north Mississippi for one two-year term, and Gene Taylor, who held the 4th District seat in south Mississippi from 1989 until 2010, were defeated.

Both Taylor and Childers first won their congressional seats in special elections. Taylor won in 1989 when newly elected Republican U.S. Rep. Larkin Smith died in a plane crash. 

In office, Taylor often was a thorn in the side for both parties. The Republicans could not defeat him. But Taylor often voted against the national Democrats. He voted to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton, and he often did not vote for the Democrats’ choice for speaker. There were countless other examples where Taylor voted against the Democratic side.

While Taylor held the 4th District seat for more than a decade after winning the special election, Childers served only one term before being defeated by state Sen. Alan Nunnelee of Tupelo.

Childers won a special election after incumbent 1st District U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker was appointed to the U.S. Senate by then-Gov. Haley Barbour when incumbent Trent Lott unexpectedly resigned.

Childers, who was a former chancery clerk in Prentiss County in northeast Mississippi, initially won the seat in part because of the geography of the district. The district included both populous DeSoto County in northwest Mississippi just south of Memphis and rural northeast Mississippi anchored by Tupelo.

Northeast Mississippi voters, by and large, put party preference aside and voted for Childers, a fellow northeast Mississippian, over Republican Southaven Mayor Greg Davis from DeSoto County.

But in 2010, the Republicans nominated Nunnelee, another northeast Mississippian, removing Childers’ geographic advantage.

It could be argued the 2010 elections were the last competitive Mississippi House races. Republican state Rep. Steven Palazzo defeated Taylor 52% to 47% while Nunnelee upended Childers 55% to 41% in the November 2010 general election. Since Taylor’s and Childers’ losses, no Democratic candidate in any of the three majority-white districts has garnered as much as 35% of the vote.

Significant focus has been given to this November’s U.S. Senate race where Democratic District Attorney Scott Colom of Columbus is attempting to upend Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Much less attention has been given to the four U.S. House seats, where all four incumbents have opposition.

In Mississippi’s only majority-Black district, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson has been nearly as dominant electorally as his Republican colleagues in the three majority-white districts.

The bottom line is that the challengers in all four U.S. House races face long odds this November.

Various metrics have long identified Mississippi’s U.S. House districts as being non-competitive. Through the years, the respected Cook Political Report, based on its analysis of data, has ranked all four Mississippi House districts as high on its partisan voting index. In other words, the three majority-white districts have a strong Republican lean while the majority-Black district has a significant Democratic tilt.

Earlier this decade when the Mississippi Legislature was redrawing lines for the four U.S. House districts to ensure equal populations in each district based on the 2020 U.S. Census, the Democrats, led by Rep. Thompson, tried to make the districts less partisan. Thompson offered to take in more Republican-leaning areas to make his 2nd District more compact and in the process more competitive.

But Republicans, fearing that Thompson’s offer also would make the 3rd District represented by Michael Guest of Rankin County more competitive, rejected that offer.

The Legislature is expected to take another stab at congressional redistricting in the coming months in light of this year’s U.S. Supreme Court landmark ruling that allows minority voting strength to be diluted. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and others have cited the ruling as an opportunity to defeat Thompson, only the second Black Mississippian to serve in the U.S. House since the 1800s.

It will be interesting to see which – if any – of the four U.S. House districts become more competitive as a result of that Supreme Court ruling and the anticipated redrawing of districts by the Mississippi Legislature at Reeves’ behest. Redrawn districts would first be used in the 2028 election.

The U.S. Supreme Court has twice reversed Mississippi death-row convictions in the past seven years on the basis of racial bias in jury selection. Counsel for death row inmate Willie Manning say his conviction should be the next one overturned.

In a filing Friday with the Mississippi Supreme Court, Manning’s legal team argued that decisions by the nation’s high court in the Terry Pitchford and Curtis Flowers cases enable Manning to seek post-conviction relief.

The motion was filed eight days after Mississippi Today published its investigation that uncovered new evidence suggesting Manning’s innocence. 

On May 28, U.S. Supreme Court justices reversed the capital murder conviction of Terry Pitchford in Mississippi. In a 5-4 decision, they concluded the trial judge failed to follow all the steps required to make sure that then-District Attorney Doug Evans was not discriminating on the basis of race when he struck all four potential Black jurors.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the judge “erroneously omitted” part of the inquiry detailed in the court’s Batson v. Kentucky 1986 decision, which banned the use of jury strikes to remove potential jurors on the basis of race.

The Pitchford opinion followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that threw out the conviction of Curtis Flowers, who was on Mississippi’s death row. Evans also prosecuted that case.

In Flowers’ first four trials, Evans tried to strike all 36 Black prospective jurors. “The State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Manning, who is Black, went on trial in 1994 for the 1992 killings of two Mississippi State University students, Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler, who were both white.

In that capital murder trial, 28 of 85 potential jurors were Black, but only two served on the jury. 

After then-District Attorney Forrest Allgood exercised seven of his 11 strikes against Black Mississippians, defense lawyer Mark Williamson objected, saying, “I would at this time like to interpose an objection to the State just arbitrarily striking every black as he’s gotten down to it.”

As a result of these strikes, Williamson continued, Manning does not have “a jury comprised of his peers.” At the time, white Mississippians made up 69% of Starkville’s population; they made up 83% of the Oktibbeha County jury that heard Manning’s case.

Asked by Circuit Judge Lee J. Howard to provide race-neutral reasons for striking jurors, Allgood responded that one Black man wore gold chains, “a ring in his ear” and “sunglasses hung in his shirt.” The prosecutor challenged another African American because he lived in a neighborhood similar to Brookville Garden Apartments, where many low-income Black residents live in Starkville.

Other reasons provided by the prosecutor to strike Black potential jurors? One “watches a tremendous amount of TV,” “made eye contact” with the defense counsel and was “wishy-washy” on capital punishment. But the juror actually said she could “go with the death penalty” during questioning.

But Allgood did not strike white potential jurors who held similar views on capital punishment. One white woman even said in her questionnaire that she could not impose the death penalty, only changing her answer during questioning that is part of jury selection. She still served on the jury. 

The prosecutor also excused his strikes of Black potential jurors by saying they read “liberal magazines.” Those magazines were Jet and Ebony — two publications focused on Black news and culture. In the recent motion, Manning’s counsel wrote that this reason “reeks of racial motivation.”

The magazines, Allgood said, included “a lot” of articles “espousing O.J.’s innocence” in the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Jet published 15 articles on Simpson in the months following the killings, but none of them declared Simpson’s innocence. Ebony featured people’s opinions on the crime, but the magazine didn’t weigh in on who committed the murders.

When striking one Black potential juror — Christi LaMarque Robertson — Allgood repeated that Robertson was someone who “read those same magazines … which has had those articles on O.J. Simpson.” She read Time and Newsweek, according to her questionnaire. White candidates read the same magazines and wound up on the jury.

Allgood struck two Black potential jurors because they were “unemployed.” In reality, one worked at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. The other was disabled.

In contrast, four white potential jurors wrote “unemployed” or left the question blank in their questionnaires. One of them served on the jury.

The prosecutor struck a potential Black juror because a family member had been convicted of a crime. But Allgood raised no objections with three white potential jurors who had been arrested.

In the motion Friday, Manning’s counsel called these reasons “either inconsistent with the record or equally applicable to several white jurors.”

After being challenged, Allgood questioned why the defense’s strikes were all aimed at white potential jurors.

“There weren’t any blacks left to strike except one,” Williamson responded.

Williamson cried foul and asked the judge to strike the jury and declare a mistrial. Howard rejected that request, later saying, “All reasons stated by the State for the exercise of its peremptory challenges were for a race-neutral reason.”

But Manning’s counsel argued that, just like in the Pitchford case, the trial judge had “failed to undertake a meaningful review of the prosecutor’s reasons,” quickly moving on after he professed them. “In one sense,” the motion reads, “the trial judge’s treatment of Batson was even more egregious than in Pitchford.”

This filing is an additional challenge to Manning’s standing motion in front of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

In September 2024, his lawyers asked for a rehearing after this court upheld Manning’s death sentence in a 5-4 decision, clearing the way for his execution. 

According to court observers, justices usually rule on such rehearings within 60 days. It’s been more than 700 days, and a decision has yet to be made.

The attorney general’s office has previously said that Manning’s Batson claim is barred because the courts have already ruled on the issue. Manning’s counsel called this justification “unreasonable.”

The state has yet to respond to the most recent motion, but Attorney General Lynn Fitch has previously called on justices to schedule the execution. “What he is doing is a blatant attempt to delay his lawful execution,” Fitch wrote in a 2023 brief.

In a brief filed by the Innocence Project, ACLU and the NAACP on behalf of Manning, lawyers wrote that “the jury selection for Mr. Manning’s trial was replete with blatant racially motivated strikes that could never survive a Batson challenge today.”

“Mr. Manning never stood a chance to prove his innocence even before he entered a courtroom.”

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against Jackson alleging the city knowingly allowed residents to drink contaminated water. A group of residents filed the lawsuit in 2022, before it was dismissed in U.S. District Court in 2024.

The plaintiffs — residents Priscilla Sterling, Raine Becker, Shawn Miller and John Bennett — alleged that the city’s actions and failures caused lead to enter Jackson’s drinking water and that city officials later misrepresented that the water was safe to drink. The lawsuit claims the contamination violated Jacksonians’ right to “bodily integrity.”

The allegations point to testing from the Mississippi State Department of Health from 2010 to 2013 that showed lead in the city’s water was “increasing at an alarming rate.”

“Rather than take the needed steps to stop lead from leaching further into the water, the City ignored warnings, even actively switching a section of the City’s water source from a safe groundwater system to the corrosive surface water system that was already causing lead to leach from its pipes into residents’ drinking water,” the plaintiffs wrote in their 2024 appeal.

The lawsuit named as defendants: the city, former mayors Chokwe A. Lumumba and Tony Yarber; former public works directors Kishia Powell, Robert Miller and Jerriot Smash; and Trilogy Engineering Services.

In affirming the district court’s 2022 ruling, the court said that while the alleged deprivations of clean water and honest information are “grievous,” they “do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.” The opinion added that the allegations aren’t comparable to bodily integrity cases the court has previously ruled on, such as those arguing assault or forced surgery.

“We are skeptical that the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water fits within the right to bodily integrity, and Plaintiffs point us to no historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent convincing us otherwise,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote.

Engelhardt added there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.” The plaintiffs, though, have other avenues to pursue justice in the matter, he said.

“The Constitution does not provide a remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries,” the opinion argued. “But that does not mean they are without a remedy. Plaintiffs may pursue tort claims against Defendants, elect officials who will better manage the water system and provide accurate information to the public, or petition their state and federal legislatures for other remedies.”

Jackson Mayor John Horhn said in a statement Friday, “We are pleased that the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of these claims. The City remains committed to the health, safety, and well-being of every Jackson resident.”

Arma Cooper got an apology from school officials responsible for the strip search of her son. But she didn’t get accountability. 

LeRoy Wise, the school resource officer who allegedly inspected her son’s genitals, said in a recording submitted in a court case that the search might not have been legal. Mississippi Today could not confirm his employment status with the district. Dietrich Harmon, the McAdams High School principal who oversaw the searches, still leads the school.

“They were hoping it could be swept under the rug,” said Cooper, who has since pulled her son from McAdams High School.

Cooper recorded a meeting she and her son had on Feb. 11, the day after the searches, with Wise, Harmon and coach Kenyon Ross. The recording, filed Wednesday with the Attala County circuit court, captures a school official’s apology and a school resource officer’s admission of potential wrongdoing in wake of the searches. Cooper authenticated the recording under oath.

The recording is the latest piece of evidence in a case Cooper and six other parents brought against the Attala County School District after they said their sons were strip-searched at the high school in February.

The teenage boys were escorted out of a restroom when a vape detector went off. The parents say Wise made the boys strip naked and expose their genitals for an inspection. He found no contraband on any of them. 

The parents, on behalf of their sons, filed a federal lawsuit on June 15 against Wise, Harmon and Superintendent Rhyne Thompson for their roles in the strip searches. The plaintiffs said the searches violated their sons’ civil rights and broke district policy.

School district leadership would not comment on the recording. They acknowledged receipt of the lawsuit in an unsigned statement and said the safety and well-being of students and staff are priorities.

Defendants filed responses to the lawsuit last month. William Allen, Wise’s attorney, argued that the resource officer’s actions weren’t reckless and didn’t rise to the level of a civil rights violation. The attorney also claims Wise’s actions didn’t stray from his job duties. Harmon denied, through his attorney, violating any of the boys’ constitutional rights and asserted that the principal acted in good faith on the job. Attorneys Danny Griffith and John McClain, who represent the district and superintendent, argue there was no proof Thompson or the district didn’t adequately train Wise or that the reported lack of training led to the alleged strip search.

Read more: Federal lawsuit accuses Attala County school resource officer of strip-searching high school boys

Six parents of the students who were searched told Mississippi Today their sons’ behavior has changed since the incident. Some have dropped athletics and other activities they used to enjoy. Others retreated from friends and family. Others feel too humiliated and afraid to go to school.

“We want our students that are in the Attala County School District to know they’re safe,” Cooper said. “We want justice.”

‘Down to your ankles’

In the recorded meeting, Cooper’s son recalled the series of events that led to the strip search in Wise’s office.

The student said he was on a bathroom break with other classmates when a vape detector went off. Then coach Kenyon Ross and Wise escorted the group to the hallway. Ross looked for a wand to scan the boys for an electronic cigarette. 

The boys were later led to a hallway outside Wise’s office. Each boy spent about eight minutes inside, Cooper’s son estimated. He waited and wondered what was happening inside.

Then it was his turn.

“He said take my hoodie off, take my shirt off and pull my pants down. And so I did that. And then I started to pull my pants back up. He said, ‘No, no, no. Go to the chair and pull your drawers down to your ankles,’” the boy said in the recording.

Wise’s explanation for the search didn’t provide any comfort for Cooper. She felt he was making light of the incident in their conversation.

“Situation with that is, in the past, we have had kids to have vapes,” Wise said to Cooper in the recording.

A history of abuse repeated

Cooper said withdrawing her son before his senior year of high school was difficult. She enrolled him at a private Christian school she founded in 2015. He had to give up on activities like band along with easier access to scholarship opportunities. She said it was the right choice, though.

“They would still have to look up in the face of the principal and the assistant principal who allowed it,” Cooper said of her son and the other boys.

Some parents chose to keep their students enrolled at McAdams High. They said financial and transportation concerns were deciding factors.

Angenette Haymer’s son still attends the school. He decided to stay so he could compete in basketball and football. She also couldn’t transfer him to a neighboring district without a different address.

“I’m happy he will graduate this year, but I hate he was forced to make this decision,” she said. 

Her son will graduate a year early. He told her he “wants to get it over with.”

Tiffany Greer also kept her son at McAdams High. She said the tuition to attend a private school was too steep. She also would need to handle his transportation, which would be an added inconvenience.

He also told her he wanted to continue with the band. She said he is “doing well enough to get through the days.” But she’s paranoid he could face harassment again.

She said she hasn’t seen Wise around the high school. 

Cooper said she and her son were far from strangers to Harmon and Wise before the incident in February. She taught at the school for a decade. Harmon was her son’s elementary school principal. 

Her son had been to Harmon’s home, too. He had played with Harmon’s children, she said.

“The district doesn’t want to take ownership when these things happen,” Cooper said. “The principal doesn’t want to take ownership. So where does it end?”

She said she hoped to protect her son. She knew his pain well. A teacher physically assaulted her as a student in the 1980s at the same school, she said. She also had to transfer to a different district before her senior year to avoid her abuser. She said she feels as though history has repeated itself.

While no trial date has been set yet for the lawsuit, Cooper said she wants justice for her son.

“As a parent, I sometimes feel I’m constantly preaching greatness to my children when the world around them tries to say something different. And I keep telling my son that just because someone mistreats you doesn’t make you the villain.

“And even the people that we trust the most can do us the most harm.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Adam Telle, who is currently helping oversee the Army Corps of Engineers, will serve as acting Army secretary. 

Telle was a former longtime staffer and top adviser for the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, and helped lead federal efforts for the state’s recovery after Hurricane Katrina. More recently, Telle has been influential in advancing the Yazoo Backwater Area Water Management Project, or the “Yazoo pumps,” in the Mississippi Delta.

“I am pleased to announce that Adam Telle, the current Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, will become Acting Secretary of the Army, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on social media. “He is a Great Patriot, who is respected by all.”

Telle also served as the White House’s liaison to the Senate in the first Trump administration.

Telle, who worked for U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama before joining Cochran’s staff, is a graduate of Mississippi State University, where he was elected student body president. 

Gov. Tate Reeves on Friday called Telle’s appointment “a tremendous choice.”

“Adam has been a great friend to Mississippi over the years and has done a lot for our state,” Reeves wrote. “And it’s hard to go wrong with a Mississippi State University grad!”

Telle takes over for Dan Driscoll, who resigned recently. Driscoll gave no reason for his resignation, but there have been numerous reports that he clashed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump has not said whom he will nominate for the job on a permanent basis. Hegseth on Friday praised Trump’s choice of Telle.

LELAND – Uninsured and underinsured residents of the Mississippi Delta can access affordable dentistry and physical, occupational and speech therapy through a new initiative based in Leland of Delta Health Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to improve access to health services. 

A year after breaking ground, the Delta Cares Center opened its doors Thursday. 

Patients can pay for services on a sliding scale that starts at $3 – and can receive a free ride to and from the clinic, said Karen Matthews, CEO of Delta Health Alliance.

“They assume they can’t come get care because they don’t have insurance or because they have Medicaid or whatever – and they can,” Matthews said. 

Funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Delta Cares Center is attached to the comprehensive Leland Medical Clinic that has served the region since 2013.  

Dane Maxwell, Mississippi’s director for USDA rural development, called projects such as the Leland clinic expansion “the exact type of economic development projects that we aim to support” in an email to Mississippi Today. Maxwell echoed this remark during a speech at the clinic’s grand opening Thursday. 

Among the patients hoping to be first in line for an appointment is Billy Tucker, a 50-year-old single father from Greenville. In 2024, Tucker and his two sons, now 8 and 10, nearly died in a car crash. For the first time in two years, Tucker said he has hope he might begin to address the intense back and nerve pain that leaves him “hurting all the time” and unable to return to work, stand for more than five minutes or even sign his name. The former truck driver said he has been denied disability benefits from the state several times, exhausted his savings, sold all his valuables and experienced wait times up to six months for occupational and physical therapy.

“Providing – that’s what I miss most,” Tucker said about not being able to use his hands to cook, clean and play with his kids the way he used to. He said he knows he provides for his sons emotionally and in other ways, such as helping them with their homework. But as a former foster child, Tucker said he wants to do as much as he can to give them the childhood he didn’t have. 

At Leland Medical Clinic, up to 500 patients like Tucker will be able to access rehabilitative therapy as a result of the expansion, said Hilary Meier, vice president of health at the clinic. Additionally, the new space will have openings for about 2,000 dental patients in the first year, she said. Meier expects those slots to fill up quickly.

“We have a lot of patients with pain,” Meier said. Many of them go without preventive care and ultimately suffer chronic health problems, she said.

To make its expansion possible, the nonprofit hired a dentist and four rehabilitative therapists for physical, occupational, speech and respiratory therapy.

Those who stand to gain the most from the clinic’s opening are those who have historically lost the most. People in the Delta have often felt overlooked when it comes to public investment and healthcare. The region has some of the worst health metrics in the state and country, including higher rates of untreated diabetes leading to amputations. 

For people like Tucker, the opening couldn’t come soon enough. In the absence of physical therapy services, Tucker has been using the wellness center at Leland Medical Clinic to exercise on his own. But he is excited by the possibility of getting support that could improve his quality of life and keep him around longer for his boys. 

“I sit here at the house and I feel like I’m wasting away,” Tucker said. “I don’t want to waste away. I want to get better.”