OurTupelo

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

A Rankin County jail guard who was caught on camera in 2022 punching an inmate and breaking his jaw will now police schoolchildren in the county. 

In a Facebook post Tuesday, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department shared that Jordan McQueary, the former guard, had been assigned as a school resource officer, and congratulated him on completing his law enforcement training. 

In a video that surfaced in January, McQueary can be seen lunging and punching an inmate in the face, knocking him to the ground, after a verbal altercation. The inmate, Dustin Rives, suffered a fractured jaw and developed a deep infection during the following month, ultimately requiring surgery. 

In his incident report, McQueary quoted Rives as saying to a female guard, “Shut up, bitch, before I punch you in the face.” Rives said he did use that language, but said it was directed at the male trusty who accompanied the guards, not the female guard. 

“Before inmate Rives could do anything kind of harm to another officer, I struck him and placed him on the ground,” McQueary wrote. 

David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union who reviewed the incident for Mississippi Today, said punching a detainee could only be justified in self-defense, which was not the case according to McQueary’s own report.

Jason Dare, attorney for the sheriff’s department, said, “The single slap in response to Rives (1) calling a female jailer a “b****”, (2) threatened to punch her,  then (3) raising his right fist to follow through with his threats, appears permissible under Fourteenth Amendment standards.” 

About a minute and a half after McQueary punched Rives, McQueary can be seen escorting the inmate away with his hands behind his back, pants pulled down and genitals exposed. “I was begging them to pull up my pants,” Rives wrote in his 2022 complaint to the department. “They laughed and said they wouldn’t.”

Rives was one of at least nine jail inmates who filed complaints or federal lawsuits alleging that McQueary had assaulted them. As is true for other lawsuits against the department, most were filed by inmates themselves, without lawyers, and nearly all were dismissed. 

Dare said none of the pro se claims filed against McQueary resulted in a finding of impropriety against him.

A supervisor closed Rives’ complaint three days after he filed it, and Rives said he never heard from the department again. 

The supervisor wrote that the department had provided a “satisfactory response,” involving scheduling a medical appointment and informing Rives that he had a right to press charges against McQueary after he was released. The supervisor’s report did not indicate whether McQueary was questioned or disciplined about the incident. 

Mississippi Today and The New York Times had previously uncovered allegations of widespread violence in the jail and a culture of brutality condoned and encouraged by top officials.

In 2024, the sheriff’s department honored McQueary for his “outstanding” work in the jail. 

“School resource officers protect children from violence. So the question is — would parents, children, teachers, and/or faculty feel safe with Deputy McQueary protecting their school?“ Dare said. “Based on the totality of unmanipulated facts, Deputy McQueary appears capable of protecting a school and helping to maintain a safe, secure learning environment.”

McQueary did not respond to a request for comment. 

The parents of Nolan Xavier Wells and families of two other Black teenagers who died this year under unclear circumstances say they will not stop until they have answers and justice. 

Christine and Elmore Wonsley traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and stood Thursday with the family of Daniel Erving, who died in Texas in April, and Tyler Smith, who died in Kentucky on July 4 – the same day Wells went missing from Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

Their attorneys say each teen was in the company of mostly white groups before they died. 

“Nobody in all three of the questionable deaths of these 18-year-old young Black kids, nobody has been held accountable in any way,” said attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Wells’ parents and helped bring the families together at the National Urban League’s annual conference.

Wells traveled by boat with white friends to Horn Island on July 4, but he did not return with them to Ocean Springs. A park ranger found his body in the water off the island two days later. 

Preliminary findings from an independent autopsy released last week list Wells’ manner and cause of death as undetermined. The pathologist said more investigation is needed to rule out foul play and drowning. Results of the first autopsy, conducted by the state medical examiner’s office, have not been released.

On Thursday, attorneys for Wells’ family said they have hired an audio engineer expert to review a dispatch call made by his friends when their boat was taking on water, and an oceanic expert to look more into how the tides were moving when Wells went missing.  

While Wells’ death has attracted national attention, Crump said few people outside of Texas or Kentucky likely know about Erving and Smith and what happened to them. He also said there are similarities between Erving’s and Wells’ cases. 

Tameca Erving remembers how her son left on April 13 to hang out with two white friends. She thought they were staying around the neighborhood, but they left to go fishing at Lake Ray Hubbard outside Dallas. 

She reported him missing around midnight after he didn’t return. Days later, Daniel Erving’s body was pulled from the lake and his death was ruled an accident from drowning from jumping off a bridge, according to the state autopsy. 

Erving said she does not believe her son drowned because he was healthy and a member of the swim team. An autopsy report found he had an unobstructed airway, she said, which is not a sign of drowning. 

During the press conference, Crump said the two white people Erving was with threw away his clothes and phone, deleted messages from Erving’s phone and chose not to go to authorities. 

Erving said her son was set to graduate in May but did not because of what was done to him.   

Months later, a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old were arrested and charged with tampering with evidence but not with Erving’s death, which his mother called offensive. She is calling for murder charges and her legal team is working to have Erving’s case presented to a new grand jury. 

In Kentucky, Smith went to a Fourth of July house party in Lexington, where he died of a gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said his death was accidental and the shot was self-inflicted. 

His family also disputes the finding about this death, which they say relied on party attendees who said Smith shot himself while playing Russian roulette, his grandmother Necee Anderson said at the Thursday press conference. The family has pushed police to test the gunshot residue on Smith’s hands, which she said did not happen. 

Days later, police arrested a 20-year-old and charged him with tampering with evidence, as happened after Erving’s death in Texas. 

“I’m not afraid to go to hell and sit with the devil,” Anderson said about her family’s continued pursuit of answers and justice. 

On Thursday, Wells’ parents said his loss has been one of the most difficult things they have navigated. On top of grief and unanswered questions, they said they are dealing with having their characters attacked. 

Christine Wonsley, Wells’ mother, said those attacks will not stop her from advocating for her son. 

“All of these distractions, other questions, the people, the attacks people have sent our way. Just know, we will not be distracted,” she said. 

She and her husband were asked about potential defamation lawsuits people may face for public speculation about their son’s death. Crump said he is aware of that effort and also called it a distraction. 

On Wednesday, a 20-year-old former teammate who was by Horn Island the day Wells went missing announced he was suing anyone involved in spreading misinformation about him that has compromised his safety. 

In a statement, the family of Bart Edmiston Jr. said he had nothing  to do with Wells’ death. He said he drove his own boat to the island and helped Wells’ friends fix their boat when it took on water. It is internet personalities and sleuths who have wrongly implicated him in the death, the family said. 

“We grieve for the loss of Nolan, but as a family, we are also concerned for the lives of our children and the safety of others being “convicted” in a court of public opinion without facts — indeed contrary to known evidence,” the family said in its statement. 

Cease and desist letters have begun to go out in anticipation of a defamation suit, and more letters are expected, Edmiston’s attorney, Russell Latino, who is also publisher of the Magnolia Tribune site, wrote on Facebook. 

In a statement Thursday, state Rep. Jeffrey Hulum, a Democrat from Gulfport who is running for a U.S. House seat, said private citizens have threatened elected officials on the Coast with defamation lawsuits. He said when elected officials promise to hold people accountable for threats, that promise should cover everyone.

Hulum mentioned the two autopsies that have been performed. 

“Those are the public facts, and they do not support anyone saying that Nolan Wells drowned or that Nolan Wells was murdered,” Hulum said. “The honest answer today is that no one outside that process knows exactly what happened to him, and anyone claiming otherwise is replacing the judicial process with a false narrative.” 

Hulum said premature statements cause damage.

“This is not a red herring and it is not a political football. It is about the tragic death of a bright young man who lost his life far too soon,” he said. “It is about the fact that every mother should know, to the fullest extent possible, what happened to cause the death of her child.”

Correction, 7/30/2026: The headline has been updated to show Nolan Xavier Wells’ correct last name.

After nearly 60 years, the Rankin County School District has been released from a federal desegregation order put in place to curb racial discrimination. 

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson declared that racial segregation no longer exists in how students are zoned or transferred to district schools and classes or how staff and faculty are assigned to schools. The court also found that students of all races are subjected to equitable discipline practices and have access to extracurricular activities in the district.

“The Court finds that the District’s current policies and practices are race-neutral and comply in good faith with the Court’s orders and the District has done everything practicable to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination,” Johnson wrote.

The court will no longer monitor whether the district is discriminating against Black students and staff. The district no longer discriminates against Black students or operates a dual school system, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

At a September hearing, attorneys for the plaintiffs, some of whom were in attendance, argued school desegregation persists in Rankin County schools. Erica Frankenberg, an education professor at Penn State who researches racial desegregation, found in an investigative report that the district missed between 20 and 30 opportunities to diversify its staff, passing on qualified Black applicants in favor of white ones.

Attorneys remarked the district had one Black teacher in the gifted and talented program.

John Hooks, an attorney for Rankin County schools, reminded the court at the September hearing that Brandon Elementary was designated a National Blue Ribbon School for closing the achievement gap for Black students in 2021.

Black students post higher graduation grades and lower drop-out rates in the district, he added.

Rankin County schools join the Copiah County School District, which was released from its desegregation order in August. In Mississippi, 28 school districts remain under desegregation orders. 

Only two other southern states, Alabama and Georgia, have more districts that are monitored for vestiges of segregation by a federal judge.

The federal monitoring of Rankin County schools came about as a result of a lawsuit brought by local Black students. In 1967, Kenneth Adams and other Black children sued the district for discriminating against Black students and operating a dual school system for them. The court ordered a freedom of choice plan for students within the district, and later, in 1970, ordered the district to desegregate its schools across six metrics, ranging from how students are zoned to district schools to staff assignments to schools.

For the subsequent decades, district officials provided the court with annual reports on the racial composition of staff assignments and student enrollment, among other data. District officials were tasked with ensuring no schools in the district had a student population that was overwhelmingly Black or white. White student populations at schools had to be between 46.59% and 86.59% in the 2023-24 school year. 

The goal was that each school roughly represented the diversity districtwide. Rankin County schools are approximately 27% Black and 62% white.

The court ensured compliance through district data. Since the September hearing, the court received at least five reports from the district detailing the racial demographics of students at each school and among student transfers between schools. The district also gave the court the racial breakdown of its teachers and administrators.

Twelve schools fell outside of the range set by the court to determine racially identifiable schools over the past five years.

In October 2019, the court stopped monitoring whether new construction and building closures disproportionately disadvantaged Black students or staff. That year, the court also stopped monitoring the race of all district bus drivers. Both decisions came after the court ruled that district leaders no longer discriminated in decisions related to district expansion, school construction and abandonment of buildings and supplies.

Rankin County’s release from its desegregation order has followed several others in the region. The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has signaled willingness to release more school districts from desegregation orders. More school districts were released from desegregation orders during Trump’s first administration than under the past four presidents.

“From the very first, federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Johnson cited a prior ruling. “Now, after almost 60 years, the Court concludes its supervision.”

Mississippi could grow its population, strengthen its workforce and boost its economy if employers offered more family-forward policies – and doing so wouldn’t be that hard, researchers argue in a new report by the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance. 

Those policies include paid leave, childcare assistance, flexible scheduling and health-related benefits. Even modest changes could increase employee retention and productivity and put millions more dollars into the state’s economy, said researchers for the nonprofit group, which is dedicated to improving early learning and child development outcomes in the state. 

“Too often, family-forward workplace policies are seen as nice-to-have benefits or feel-good ideas,” Biz Harris, executive director of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, told Mississippi Today. “But the reality is that they’re some of the most effective tools employers have to address the workforce challenges they’re already facing.” 

Mississippi has the nation’s second-lowest workforce participation rate, with nearly half of its adults unemployed. Childcare challenges cost the state an estimated $673 million a year, including $553 million in employer losses from absenteeism and employee turnover. More than half of Mississippi parents report missing work because of childcare access, and some leave their jobs altogether. 

And Mississippians are leaving more than just their jobs. The state’s population has declined or remained unchanged nearly every year since 2014, leading to what policy analysts have dubbed “the brain drain.” Jackson is one of the fastest-shrinking U.S. cities. Meanwhile, neighboring states such as Alabama and Arkansas are growing. 

The good news, according to the report, is that employers don’t have to look out of state for solutions. Several Mississippi companies are already implementing strategies that help attract and keep working parents. 

Mississippi Power, a utility company headquartered in Gulfport, offers up to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, two weeks of paid parental leave and 12 weeks of paid adoption leave, according to the report. 

Toyota Mississippi, a manufacturing plant in Blue Springs, includes an on-site childcare center offering 24/7 services to align with employees’ shifts. 

Many family-forward policies don’t require significant financial investments, the report noted. Offering flexible workday start and end times costs employers nothing and can help employees navigate school or daycare drop-off and pick-up times. A private lactation space in an existing area of the workplace can improve employee satisfaction without requiring major structural shifts for an organization. 

The report also encouraged employers to invest in health benefits that are specifically geared toward supporting families, such as a low-deductible family insurance plan. 

Mississippi Early Learning Alliance helped develop a childcare tax credit for businesses that contribute to the cost of childcare for their employees. The group created an economic impact calculator to help businesses understand how much money they could save by investing in childcare. 

Family-forward policies can start small but have profound impact, Harris said. And not just for working parents, but for the next generation. 

Studies show that when working parents have access to robust paid leave and affordable, high-quality childcare, children bond better and benefit cognitively and emotionally. Those children grow up and become stronger contributors to the communities where they’re raised. 

“Supporting caregivers and parents during the earliest years of a child’s life isn’t separate from building a stronger economy,” Harris said. “It’s how we build one.”

Wendy Varnado still remembers running behind the mosquito trucks. When she was a child in Edwards, in western Hinds County, in the 1980s, the trucks sprayed a haze of chemicals that mixed with engine smoke to create a dense fog the neighborhood children played in.

These days, mosquito trucks spray an ultra low volume mist that is nearly invisible, and Varnado, the Mississippi state public health entomologist, sees them in a different light. They’re now a tool she can harness against mosquito-borne diseases, including the most common one in Mississippi, West Nile virus.

There are now five confirmed human cases of West Nile virus in Mississippi this year in Hancock, Lincoln and Madison counties. This number is an undercount, Varnado said, because only a small percentage of cases are severe enough to send patients to the hospital where they can be tested. 

While people can be infected with West Nile throughout the mosquito season, human diagnoses peak in August and early September. As Mississippi reports more positive cases of West Nile virus in mosquitoes, an early indicator of impending human infections, experts emphasize the importance of local surveillance and reducing mosquito breeding grounds.

The majority of people who get infected with West Nile virus don’t show any symptoms, said Santos Portugal, an urban entomologist at Mississippi State University. About one in five will develop symptoms like a fever, headaches and body aches. Less than one in a 100 may develop a severe disease that spreads into the nervous system and can cause swelling in the brain. Elderly and immunocompromised people are at higher risk for complications, including chronic fatigue, memory loss and in rare cases, death.

“Mississippians should recognize that West Nile virus is very serious,” Portugal said. “(It’s) not something people should necessarily be afraid of, just something to be understood and do what you can to protect yourself.”

Surveillance and control

Having up-to-date counts of where mosquitoes are infected with West Nile virus is one of the most powerful tools for disease prevention, Varnado told Mississippi Today.

“The mosquitoes tell you everything,” she said. “You can have at least a two week lead time on human cases by monitoring mosquito population, and two weeks is a long time to be able to do some intervention work.”

Out of 82 counties in Mississippi, only 11 have programs to routinely trap mosquitoes and send samples to the Mississippi Department of Health for testing. Nine have reported mosquitoes with West Nile virus.

The patchwork surveillance effort all goes back to funding, Varnado said. Some states have special “mosquito control districts” and raise money through local taxes for their mosquito programs, but Mississippi does not. Many counties contract with an external pest management company for their mosquito control. 

Harrison County is one of the few counties with a dedicated mosquito control program that includes surveillance, mosquito control and education efforts. Director Gene Fayard has a seven person team, including someone dedicated to setting up traps across the county. 

Every week, his team sorts through the collected mosquitoes and sends vials with female mosquitos to the Mississippi Department of Health, which has equipment to test for West Nile and the less common Zika and Chikungunya diseases.

Other personnel handle mosquito management. Mosquito trucks break up a liquid “adulticide” into micron sized droplets that kills adult mosquitoes upon contact. Another option is “larvacide,” which attacks mosquitoes in their juvenile stage. Many larvicides, including the ones found in stores, are based on naturally occurring bacteria that specifically target mosquitoes. 

Of the two methods, larvicide is cheaper, more efficient and often better for the environment, Varnado said. Mosquitoes breed in or around standing water, and in their active months of roughly April to October, a ditch by the side of the road can contain thousands of larvae. 

“It’s just easier to kill a million when they’re in a pothole,” she said.

But, she added, people like to see the mosquito truck, a tangible sign that mosquito control efforts are taking place. 

“The spray truck isn’t the end all be all,” she cautioned. “It’s the surveillance and it’s the larviciding and it’s those prevention and source reduction activities. That’s where you’re gonna get all the bang for your buck.”

Be aware, but ‘don’t be a hermit’

The mosquito species that carries West Nile in Mississippi is Culex quinquefasciatus, also known as the southern house mosquito. As the name suggests, this species is commonly found around human dwellings. 

“This is an urban breeder,” Varnado said. “Things you do around your home make a difference with this mosquito.”

Portugal, who has a focus on mosquito education, said he encourages people to clean up potential breeding grounds around their home. 

He’s met people who didn’t realize the ‘wiggly things in the bucket of water behind the shed’ are actually mosquito larvae, and that dumping the bucket could reduce the presence of mosquitoes around their home. Other common culprits are clogged gutters and storm drains filled with organic matter such as grass clippings. 

The southern house mosquito likes “stinky water” and like most mosquitoes, doesn’t fly far.

“If you go outside and you’re just getting pelted by mosquitoes, depending on the species, there’s a good chance that the breeding source is actually pretty close to where you are,” he said. 

The Harrison County mosquito program also does outreach, including at local schools and community events. They got their first positive mosquito samples in late July, although no human cases yet. As much as he wants people to be aware of the mosquito-borne illnesses, Fayard keeps the danger in perspective. Because there is a relatively small chance of developing a severe case, he doesn’t want to discourage people from spending time outside.

“Use repellent, try not to be outdoors at dusk and dawn. That’s the most active time,” he said. “Long pants when possible, but don’t panic, don’t stay inside and be a hermit.”

The Mississippi Supreme Court on Wednesday permanently disbarred Jody Owens, the former Hinds County district attorney who recently resigned after pleading guilty to a federal charge of conspiring to commit bribery. 

The move was expected after the Mississippi Bar sought to suspend Owens from practicing law by filing a complaint with the state’s high court earlier this month. Shortly after, Owens filed a motion indicating he would voluntarily resign. 

Owens pleaded guilty to the federal felony charge in June, two weeks before he was set to go on trial in a case stemming from an FBI operation that rocked Mississippi’s capital city.

Owens learned Wednesday afternoon that he was disbarred from a Mississippi Today reporter. He was working from his private downtown Jackson office, the space that prosecutors said Owens called his “War Room.” 

“In 20 years I did wonderful things with my law license and certainly impacted thousands of lives in Mississippi and I’ll always be proud of that,” he said, referring to the work he did as the former head of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi branch.

“The problem right now is the world is so toxic,” he added. “You say ‘SPLC’ and people can’t wait to jump on you.”

The SPLC was recently indicted in Alabama on federal fraud charges.

A native of Terry in southern Hinds County, Owens was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 2006. He won election as Hinds County’s top prosecutor in 2019, besting two rivals in the Democratic primary, and avoided a runoff. 

A self-proclaimed “progressive prosecutor,” Owens eventually caught the eye of federal authorities. Beginning as early as 2023, two undercover FBI agents posed as real estate developers seeking to build a convention center hotel in downtown Jackson on a plot of land for which the city had previously obtained a federal loan to develop.

The agents enlisted an unsuspecting Owens, who has also worked in real estate, to connect them to powerful Jacksonians, including now-former Jackson City Council Member Aaron Banks and former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, according to a lengthy indictment unveiled in the fall of 2024. 

The two other elected officials also pleaded guilty in connection to the federal bribery case, one week after Owens. 

Owens’ sentencing is set for Oct. 15 before Judge Daniel P. Jordan III in the Southern District of Mississippi. He faces up to five years in prison. 

The now-former attorney isn’t quite ready to reveal what he plans to do next. But he’s recently been taking inspiration from the 1996 movie “The Preacher’s Wife.” 

“As the Whitney Houston song goes, ‘I believe in miracles,’” he said.

Months after Mayor John Horhn warned Mississippi’s capital city faced a hefty budget shortfall, a narrow majority of the Jackson City Council refused to formally declare that is the case. 

On paper, Jackson has a deficit, but that doesn’t mean the city is truly facing a shortfall this year since the administration took steps to curb spending. 

During Tuesday’s council meeting, four of Jackson’s seven council members voted down an order that would have amended the budget for the fiscal year 2026, which ends Sept. 30, in line with a state law requiring municipalities to redo appropriations in the event of lower-than-estimated revenues. 

The city’s Department of Finance and Administration had recommended the council adopt the order because Jackson is projected to bring in about $112 million in revenues to its general fund – $23 million less than the $135 million general fund budget the council passed last fall. 

Council members who rejected the order argued Tuesday that doesn’t mean the city is short on money, with Ward 1 Council Member Ashby Foote pointing to steps the administration took to successfully keep spending in line with real revenues. 

“I’m still not convinced that we’re going to have a deficit, OK?” said Foote, who joined Ward 2 Council Member Tina Clay, Ward 3 Council Member Kenneth Stokes and Ward 4 Council Member Brian Grizzell in opposing the order. 

The vote surprised the city’s chief administrative officer, Pieter Teeuwissen, who had been so concerned about Jackson’s general fund that he ordered a citywide hiring freeze.

But the vote came as affirmation to Clay, the previous chair of the city’s Finance Committee who recently led a series of meetings to understand Jackson’s troubled finances. 

For months, Clay has said Jackson is not facing a deficit and that the council knew when it passed the $135 million general fund budget that it was an estimate – not a reflection of what the city would actually spend. At Tuesday’s meeting, she nodded vigorously when Foote questioned the need for the order. 

“Mr. Foote, I appreciate you, because that’s what I’ve been saying the whole time,” she said. “So no, we don’t really have to do this. It’s just us wanting to do this.” 

Council members Kevin Parkinson of Ward 7, Lashia Brown-Thomas of Ward 6 and Vernon Hartley of Ward 5 voted for the order.

“There is a deficit, so we need to pass this,” Hartley said. 

Jackson’s city budget is about $330 million, with most of the money dedicated for specific uses. The disagreement focuses on the city’s general fund which is made up of local taxes and can be more flexibly spent. 

In December, a consultant estimated the budget the council passed would result in a shortfall if the administration did not make changes to rein in spending. Teeuwissen and the city’s budget office followed suit, with budget documents provided to the council on Tuesday showing Jackson won’t spend more than it takes in this year. 

Nonetheless, Parkinson pointed out that the fiscal year 2026 budget still shows the original inflated estimate of $135 million. If the council did not vote for the order, Parkinson fretted, a future audit could flag the city for having a deficit this year. 

“We will not have all the revenues that we initially forecasted that we would have when we passed the budget,” he said, adding he believed, “we are therefore required to amend the budget.”

A federal government commission is set to release by Friday its decision on a proposed natural gas pipeline that would cross the full width of Mississippi.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. and Southern Natural Gas Co., both a part of the giant Kinder Morgan network, are looking to build the new infrastructure to increase gas capacity in the southeastern United States.

The project would connect to already existing pipelines and transport gas from Greenville across 10 Mississippi counties — Washington, Humphreys, Holmes, Attala, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, Lauderdale and Clarke — to Butler, Alabama. The company would also build new compressor stations in Humphreys, Attala and Lauderdale counties.

The 206 miles of new pipeline would provide up to 1.5 billion cubic feet a day of added transportation capacity, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The $1.7-billion project would create 750 temporary jobs and 15 permanent positions, according to Kinder Morgan.

FERC, which is in charge of approving interstate transmission projects such as this, released a final environmental study of the project in June. The agency wrote that while the project would have “some limited adverse environmental impacts,” mitigation measures would render those effects “less than significant.”

In a March letter, environmental groups, including Mississippi Rising Coalition, questioned the project’s impact on the over 2,000 water bodies it would cross and said it would “irreparably harm wildlife habitat.”

“(The proposal) will lock the Southeast into decades more of reliance on a dirty, volatile, and expensive form of energy that comes at a particularly high price for those on or near the Projects,” the groups wrote.

The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, whose reservation in Neshoba County is adjacent to the planned route, also expressed concerns. Melanie Carson, the tribal historic preservation officer, said the pipeline companies have offered little communication despite the route’s proximity to tribal land. One of her biggest concerns is that the infrastructure would cross the Pearl River, a valued natural resource for the tribe.

“At the end of the day, we feel like we were not properly consulted,” Carson said. “Just sending me an email to read stuff is not proper consultation. I’ve had no meetings with these people for the Mississippi Crossing (project).”

In March, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs criticized the companies for not engaging with MBCI, and wrote that the proposed route overlaps with tribal land in Leake County. But both Tennessee Pipeline Gas Co. and FERC disagreed — the latter suggested in its June study that the pipeline wouldn’t impact historic property.

Carson argued the agency lacks the institutional knowledge to make such a determination.

“We’re looking for not just how it’s going to affect us modern day, but how it potentially affects parts of our history that we want to keep intact and things that we use today for cultural reasons,” she said.

‘Let’s make the best of it‘

For the last 30 years, Tony Kinton has owned land in Leake County where he hunts and grows timber. A nature writer and photographer, the 77-year-old described the 200-acre property as a sanctuary.

“I mostly just go up there to kind of remember who I am,” Kinton said.

A couple years ago, he said, he received a letter saying that a proposed pipeline would go across his property. While Kinton said he would have preferred to keep his land undisturbed, he soon recognized he had little choice in the matter.

In the 1940s, Congress gave gas companies the ability to acquire land for pipelines through eminent domain, a process landowners can challenge in court.

Kinton said the companies were “professional and gracious,” working with him to adjust the route through his property to avoid any spring heads or hardwood forest. He also said he negotiated a price but couldn’t disclose the amount. While the pipeline would ultimately go through a patch of pine trees on Kinton’s land, he figured that was the best outcome he could manage.

“It’s going to happen, so let’s make the best of it,” he told Mississippi Today. “Like I say, I’d rather have the trees than the check. But that’s sentiment, that’s not necessarily a financial thing.”

Multiple people have received letters giving notice of an anticipated civil lawsuit by the family of Nolan Xavier Wells, a community college football player whose body was found near Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast two days after he went there with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July. 

A copy of the letter was provided to some news organizations by recipients, and was published. The attorney who sent the letter, Gary Bufkin, was not immediately available for comment Tuesday and he did not confirm that he sent the letter to the other outlets. 

The letters direct recipients to immediately preserve all evidence in their possession, control or custody in their original form. They are also directed to suspend any automatic deletion or overwrite functions on cellphones, computers, video cameras and other devices. 

Most of the letter’s pages are dedicated to the types of evidence recipients should save, broken down by nearly 20 categories, which generally fall into communications; photos, audio and video recordings; metadata for content; records about place and location; and law enforcement and prosecutorial records. 

Bufkin is representing Wells’ estate in Jackson County Chancery Court. The teenager’s mother Christine Wonsley was appointed administrator the week of his funeral. 

Ridgeland-based Carroll Bufkin PLCC, Bufkin’s firm, is working with national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, whom Christine and Elmore Wonsley hired days after Wells’ death. 

Crump’s firm is investigating the death of the Black teenager and pushing for autopsy and other investigative records. A Mississippi-based firm is handling estate matters in state court because Crump is not admitted to practice law in Mississippi. 

A spokesperson from Crump’s office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. 

The letters are dated July 20, the same day of the 18-year-old’s funeral in Ocean Springs attended by hundreds of people, including family, friends, teammates and community members. 

On Tuesday, the estate’s attorney sent several subpoenas to technology companies that run social media applications including Facebook, TikTok and SnapChat.  

Wells celebrated the Fourth of July with others by taking a boat to Horn Island, a Gulf Coast barrier island where people dock boats, wade in the water and walk on the shore of the barrier island. Hundreds of people were on the island that day, according to photos and videos.

He was reported missing after he did not return to Ocean Springs. Investigators have said his friends told them he wanted to stay behind to talk with a woman and that he planned to get a boat ride off the island. Two days later, a U.S. park ranger found his body off the northwestern tip of the barrier island that is about 8 miles offshore.

Last week, a few county and state officials commented about Wells’ case, some for the first time.

Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath, who previously met with Wells’ parents,  repeated in a Thursday video statement what she previously relayed to the family, that the state’s autopsy report would not be released publicly until grand jury review. 

McIlrath said state rules direct investigators and prosecutors not to make comments or release information that could affect the integrity of those processes.

“I understand the public’s urgency to understand what happened to Nolan. But we are not taking time for time’s sake,” she said. “We are taking the time required to complete the work this investigation demands.” 

Grand juries listen to evidence presented by prosecutors to decide whether anyone should be indicted on criminal charges and potentially go to trial. Their proceedings are not open to the public, and jurors are prohibited from talking about grand jury proceedings and disclosure of any indictments cannot be made until six months after final adjournment, according to state rules.

McIlrath did not say in the video whether the law enforcement investigation is complete or when the next grand jury will be convened. Generally, grand juries meet a few times a year across the state, and its members are chosen randomly from a list of registered voters in the county.  

Jackson County does not list its grand jury terms online. Neighboring Harrison and Hancock counties are in a separate circuit district and their grand juries meet twice a year, according to the circuit court directory and terms list published by the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office. 

The same day McIlrath released her statement, state Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell spoke with Mississippi Public Broadcasting about the Wells case, including how law enforcement handles investigations and why updates are generally not quickly shared with the public. 

He mentioned that the FBI is investigating threats against people involved in the case, including witnesses, Wells’ family, and local and state public officials. Tindell reminded people that intimidating witnesses and public officials is a felony. 

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch released a statement after Tindell’s interview extending prayers to Wells’ family and standing by the professionalism of law enforcement, the district attorney and other local leaders working on the case. 

Like Tindell and McIlrath, Fitch asked for people to respect the integrity of the investigation process, saying that efforts to intimidate, disrupt or interfere with the work of law enforcement and prosecutors or threaten their well-being “will be taken seriously and we will hold those who make them accountable.”

Also on Thursday, Gov. Tate Reeves made his first public comments about Wells on X, but he did not mention the teenager or offer condolences to his parents. 

Instead, Reeves accused the family’s attorney, Crump, of lying about facts in the case and about Mississippi. The governor extended the criticism to the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has spoken in support of Wells’ family, including at the funeral. Reeves wrote that “Crump, Sharpton and their ilk don’t care about facts” – facts that he is confident will be released from the Jackson County investigators and the State Medical Examiner’s Office. 

The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame’s induction weekend is this weekend and the Clevelands discuss all of the Class of 2026, including former Mississippi State and NFL great Glen Collins. Collins joins us in studio to discuss his career, which began at at Whitten Junior High, continued at Jim Hill High School and then State. His second year at Mississippi State coincided with Rick’s first year at the Clarion Ledger when Rick was the Mississippi State beat writer. They share some poignant memories.