(NAME-MCE) Another Dragging Hate Crime in Texas

[Anselmo Villanueva]

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/24/black-man-dragged-to.html<http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/24/black-man-dragged-to.html>

Brandon McClelland, 24, was dragged to death beneath a truck driven by two
white men in Paris, Texas last month. McClelland was black. The site of his
death is about 200 miles from the location where James
Byrd<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd_Jr.>was murdered in a
similar manner ten years ago.
*(Image at left: Jacqueline McClelland, Brandon's mother; photo courtesy Jesse
Muhammad<http://jessemuhammad.blogspot.com/2008/10/jasper-style-lynching-reporting-on.html>
.)

* <http://www.boingboing.net/>
Black man dragged to death 200 miles from site of Byrd murder 10 years
ago.  Posted
by Xeni "Hussein" Jardin
II<http://dynamic.boingboing.net/profile/Xeni%20Jardin>,
October 24, 2008 7:47 PM |
permalink<http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/24/black-man-dragged-to.html>

<http://jessemuhammad.blogspot.com/2008/10/jasper-style-lynching-reporting-on.html>Brandon
McClelland, 24, was dragged to death beneath a truck driven by two
white men in Paris, Texas last month. McClelland was black. The site of his
death is about 200 miles from the location where James
Byrd<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd_Jr.>was murdered in a
similar manner ten years ago.
*(Image at left: Jacqueline McClelland, Brandon's mother; photo courtesy Jesse
Muhammad<http://jessemuhammad.blogspot.com/2008/10/jasper-style-lynching-reporting-on.html>
.)*

McClelland's murder took place on September 16, 2008. Parts of his mangled
body were found strewn along the highway at great distance.

First responders treated the case as a hit and run. The county district
attorney's office denied the possibility of racist motivations, and said
comparisons to the Byrd lynching were
"preposterous<http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2os3Oec67F6v92oIIy-6LagVqewD9415H3O3>
."

The incident was
reported<http://www.theparisnews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=6fe16df66da2e98f>in
the
local newspaper<http://www.google.com/search?q=mcclelland+site%3Atheparisnews.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a>,
which later followed with this
editorial<http://theparisnews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=fe4ef6918d3228be>
.

Some bloggers<http://jessemuhammad.blogspot.com/2008/10/jasper-style-lynching-reporting-on.html>and
news
sites <http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_5348.shtml>associated
with the Nation
of Islam <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam> [ * ] have been
discussing the killing as a hate crime for weeks, and
claim<http://www.sfbayview.com/2008/jasper-style-lynching-in-paris-texas/>local
law enforcement ignored key forensic evidence at the crime scene.

Howard Witt at the *Chicago Tribune, who has covered related stories about
racial injustice and hate crimes in this region,* wrote about the case as a
possible hate crime <http:///> earlier this month.

The story of McClelland's death -- and allegations the investigation by
(white) local police investigators was botched -- seems to be gaining
broader attention after having been picked up by AP today: Another Dragging
Death In Texas<http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2os3Oec67F6v92oIIy-6LagVqewD9415H3O3>(Associated
Press).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2os3Oec67F6v92oIIy-6LagVqewD9415H3O3
Another dragging death in Texas raises tensions

By JEFF CARLTON – October 24, 2008

PARIS, Texas (AP) — In a gruesome case with powerful echoes of the dragging
death of James Byrd a decade ago, a black man was killed underneath a pickup
truck in East Texas and two white men have been charged with murder.

Black activists and the victim's mother are calling last month's killing of
24-year-old Brandon McClelland a racist attack. But prosecutors cast strong
doubt on that Friday.

McClelland died after going with two white friends on a late-night beer run
across the state line to Oklahoma, investigators said. Authorities said he
was run over and dragged as far as 70 feet beneath the truck. His torn-apart
body was discovered along a bloodstained rural road on Sept. 16. His mother
said pieces of his skull could still be found three days later.

The case has raised racial tensions in Paris, a town of 26,000 with a
history of fraught relations between blacks and whites.

To some, it sounded like the Byrd case, in which a black man in the East
Texas town of Jasper, about 200 miles south of Paris, was chained by the
ankles to the back of a pickup by three white supremacists and dragged for
three miles. Two of the killers are now on death row; the third is serving a
life sentence.

Prosecutors in the McClelland case said they are looking into whether one of
the defendants, Shannon Keith Finley, was in a white supremacist gang while
in prison for killing a friend.

But they said they have seen no evidence so far that McClelland's slaying
was racially motivated. And they noted the three men had been friends for
years.

"This is a group of guys who had black friends and white friends," said
Allan Hubbard, a spokesman for the Lamar County district attorney's office.
He added: "Any comparison to Jasper and James Byrd is preposterous."

Autopsy results are expected back next week. While investigators don't
believe McClelland was tied to the truck, they planned to look closely for
marks on the body that would indicate precisely how he was dragged.

Community activist Brenda Cherry said authorities have not seriously
considered the possibility this was a hate crime. "There's a problem in
Paris, Texas," she said. "I don't see a difference in getting dragged behind
a truck and getting dragged under a truck."

A flier advertising a Saturday memorial service for McClelland said he was
"the victim of a brutal and racist hate crime." The New Black Panthers met
with investigators and held a news conference at the courthouse promising to
examine the killing.

"I truly feel that race played a part in it," said the victim's mother,
Jacquline McClelland. "It is a racist town, and Paris has always been a
racist town."

The city is perhaps best known for its 70-foot Eiffel Tower replica topped
by a giant red cowboy hat. Paris, which is 73 percent white and 22 percent
black, was in the news last year after a black girl was sentenced to up to
seven years in a juvenile prison hundreds of miles from her home for shoving
a teacher's aide at school, while a white girl was sentenced by the same
judge to probation for burning down her parents' house.

At the town square, decorated with pumpkins and hay bales for Halloween, the
mother of the black girl said Friday that she began to feel Paris was a
racist town after moving there from Oklahoma.

"There's a certain amount of fear that is pressed into black people when
they live in Paris," said Creola Cotton.

According to court papers, Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley, both 27, told
police they left the dry town to get beer in Oklahoma, and on the way back,
the three men, all apparently drunk, argued about who was sober enough to
drive. McClelland, an unmarried maintenance worker, decided to walk home,
taking some beer with him, the men told police.

But Finley's estranged wife and one of his friends said they had been told
by the two defendants that Finley began to bump McClelland with the front of
his truck until McClelland fell, and Finley drove over him, according to
court papers. Crostley and Finley then allegedly drove to a car wash to
clean off the blood.

Crostley and Finley are jailed on charges of murder and evidence-tampering.
Finley's attorney did not immediately return a message. There was no answer
at the phone listing for Crostley's lawyer.

As in many small towns, some of the players are connected. The district
attorney, Gary Young, was once the court-appointed lawyer for Finley, who
was charged with murder in 2003. Finley eventually pleaded guilty to
manslaughter and was sentenced to four years.

In that same case, McClelland pleaded guilty to perjury for providing a
false alibi for Finley. He was sentenced to five years' probation but served
some jail time when he violated its terms, prosecutor Bill Harris said.

McClelland's mother said that on the day her son died, he had called Finley
to ask for his help on a home repair project at another friend's house.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand it," she said. "They didn't have to
run over and kill my baby. They could have brought him home."