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WIGGINS, Miss. (AP) — The Latest on the NAACP saying a noose was placed around a black student's neck in Mississippi (all times local):
5:55 p.m.
A sheriff's investigator says his inquiry so far supports the claim that white students placed a noose around the neck of a black student at a south Mississippi high school.
Stone County Sheriff's Capt. Ray Boggs says Monday he's still investigating the claims of Hollis and Stacey Payton that their son was assaulted Oct. 13 during a break at a football practice at Stone County High School.
Boggs says all the alleged assailants are younger than 17 and thus any charges would likely be filed in youth court. Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson is calling for a federal hate crimes investigation and for the students to be charged as adults.
Johnson is alleging that sheriff's officials deterred Stacey Payton, the boy's mother, from filing a police report. Boggs says he's the officer who talked to her and denies that. He says he was only warning Payton that pursuing criminal charges could bring hard feeling among other students, making he son's life harder at school.
Boggs, himself African-American, says the case is one of the hardest he's handled in nearly 30 years of police work.
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4:30 p.m.
The Mississippi NAACP president is calling for a federal hate-crimes investigation after the parents of a black high school student say some white students put a noose around their son's neck at school.
President Derrick Johnson says the incident happened Oct. 13 near a locker room at Stone County High School. He says up to four white students were involved. He would not say whether noose left any marks on the student.
Hollis and Stacey Payton, parents of the alleged victim, attended a news conference Monday in Wiggins with Johnson, but they did not speak. Their son, a sophomore football player, was not with them and they did not release his name.
The NAACP said the incident happened during a break in football practice.
Inita Owen, the superintendent of education for Stone County schools, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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12:07 p.m.
The state NAACP says white students at a south Mississippi high school put a noose around the neck of a black student and "yanked backward."
Ayana Kinnel, spokeswoman for the civil rights group, says Monday that the incident took place the afternoon of Oct. 13 at the Stone County High School field house in Wiggins.
Names and ages of the students involved weren't immediately released Monday. The Stone County NAACP president, Robert James, says the black student is a football player.
Kinnel says that according to a statement from the black student's family, he returned to practice after the incident.
Inita Owen, the superintendent of education for Stone County schools, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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