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Nearly a month after an Indianola police officer was accused of shooting an 11-year-old boy in the chest, the officer will continue his suspension from the force without pay and faces additional legal action. 

On Monday, the Board of Aldermen voted 4-1 to suspend Greg Capers without pay, according to Nakala Murry, the boy’s mother, who attended the meeting. This comes about three weeks after Capers was placed on paid suspension following her son Aderrien’s shooting. 

“I felt like it was a step further to getting the right thing done,” Nakala Murry said about the decision. “At least for the board, it was a step for accountability.” 

She started a petition and collected signatures from about 350 residents who agreed that taxpayer money should not have been used to pay for Capers’ suspension. That petition was placed on the board’s agenda and members took action. 

Michael Carr, a Cleveland attorney representing Capers, said neither he nor Capers were given notice of the board’s meeting and an opportunity to be heard. Carr said they both learned about the meeting and vote through social media. 

“This is very disturbing to Officer Capers, and he should have been allowed due process by the city board,” Carr said. 

The attorney said the shooting was “a complete and total accident,” but the boy’s mother said it could have been avoided. 

“You can’t afford this kind of accident,” Murry said. “This accident almost cost me my son’s life.” 

The Murry family and supporters maintain that Capers should be fired and prosecuted. They do not think he should be able to work for another law enforcement agency again. 

On May 20, Indianola police arrived at the home of Murry and her two children because a former partner had been acting irate and she worried his behavior could escalate. 

Officers were in the doorway when Aderrien rounded the corner from his bedroom to enter the living room, which is when an officer identified as Capers shot the boy in the chest. Aderrien was taken to the intensive care unit in Jackson where he was treated for a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver. 

Through his attorney, Capers said he is sorry about what happened to the boy. 

On May 30, Murry filed a federal lawsuit against Capers, Police Chief Ronald Sampson and the city of Indianola alleging “reckless indifference” by failing to fully assess the situation before shooting.

Attorneys representing the city, Sampson and Capers have not yet responded to the lawsuit complaint. 

Last week, Murray filed a criminal affidavit against Capers for aggravated assault, writing that Capers caused “bodily harm to my minor son, Aderrien Murry, by recklessly shooting him in the chest with a gun,” according to a copy of the affidavit. 

A probable cause hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 2 at 10 a.m. in the Sunflower Circuit Court in Indianola. At that hearing, a judge will decide whether evidence exists for Capers to be charged and arrested. 

Carr said the charge cited in the affidavit does not fully reflect the statute, which says someone would have needed to act purposely or recklessly showing “extreme indifference to the value of human life.” He said that is not how Capers acted. 

He also added that the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case, is still investigating the shooting. Typically, once MBI is done, it shares its findings with the district attorney’s office, which would then present it to a grand jury, Carr said.  

The Murry family has asked for body camera footage from May 20 to be released. City officials have said that footage has been turned over to MBI. 

Carr, Capers’ attorney, is hopeful that once the video is released, it will clear him of any criminal allegations stemming from the shooting. 

Meanwhile, Aderrien has a long way to recovery. His mother plans for him to return to school in the fall, but for how she’s trying to give him and her younger daughter a good summer.  

Occasionally, the boy has problems when he coughs or sneezes. 

The biggest challenge has been the emotional toll of the shooting. Murry said the other night Aderrien had a nightmare and woke up crying. He asks her if the door is locked. She said they both feel uneasy. 

Murry said her family, friends and faith make her feel like she isn’t handling the situation alone. 

“I pray that the justice system doesn’t fail me,” Nakala Murry said. “I hope the right thing will be done and people will see this as a wake up call.”

The post Indianola officer is suspended without pay in child’s shooting, faces more legal trouble appeared first on Mississippi Today.

John Damon, chief executive officer of Canopy Children’s Solutions, talks about Canopy’s annual Children’s Mental Health Summit, a two-day event, Friday, May 12, 2023, at the Sheraton Flowood The Refuge Hotel and Conference Center in Flowood, Miss.

Mississippi health news you can’t get anywhere else.

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The post The Pulse: The Canopy’s Children Mental Health Summit appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Today politics team is working to get you the information you need to vote in the November election. But they can’t do it without your help.

We want to know what questions you need answered and what resources you want to see in our 2023 Voter Guide.

Submit your questions below.

The post What questions do you have about the upcoming election? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new national report on child well-being ranks Mississippi 32nd in the nation for education, the only measure in which the state’s rank has meaningfully improved in the last decade. 

The 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book, published annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, ranked Mississippi as 48th for overall child well-being, 47th in economic well-being, 50th in health, and 50th in family and community. 

Economic well-being is composed of metrics including housing cost burden, secure employment, and child poverty. Education is based on pre-K participation, graduation rates, and reading and math proficiency. Health is calculated using low-birth weight, access to health insurance, and obesity. Family and community is based on single-parent homes, teen birth rates, and children living in high-poverty areas.  

The education ranking has seen steady improvement over the last decade, moving from 48th in 2014. A press release from the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, a partner in the report, attributed the most recent improvement to the increased high school graduation rate. This year’s report is based on graduation rates for students who graduated in May 2020, when the Mississippi Department of Education waived several graduation requirements in light of the pandemic and the graduation rate rose. More recent data from the education department shows the graduation rate has remained higher than pre-pandemic levels, even when the requirements have been reinstated. 

“The overall rank for education is quite a bright spot,” said Linda Southward, executive director of the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi. 

Commenting on the results generally, Southward also said the four areas of the report are very interconnected because of the essential role of the family in a child’s life. She tied the overall scores to the high child poverty rate of 28% in Mississippi. 

The report also highlights problems with the nation’s child care system, which stem from rising costs and fewer workers in the field. Data cited in the report showed the national average cost of child care in 2021 was $10,600 annually for one child. The average cost in Mississippi, at $4,382, was the lowest in the nation. Child care workers in Mississippi are also the lowest paid in the nation, with an hourly median wage of $9.83. 

Southward said there are about 1,500 licensed child care centers in the state, which are only able to offer slots for about two-thirds of kids under age 5, which points to a need for additional investment in family-based child care. 

She also pointed to a 2020 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation report that said the Mississippi economy loses $673 million annually from child care-related issues. 

“(Research shows) that when parents can confidently go to work, know their child is being taken care of in a quality setting, the whole comprehensive approach to child care pays for itself,” Southward said. 

One of the policy recommendations is to strengthen the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a federal program that gives states money to assist low-income families with the cost of child care. 

Carol Burnett, director of the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative, said the program is an excellent support to parents in Mississippi who receive it but only about 30% of the state’s eligible kids are being served because the program doesn’t have enough money to cover all of the eligible children. She said this problem is widespread nationally. 

She also added that procedural barriers, or “red tape,” also limit parents from successfully applying. Burnett said she has observed the Mississippi Department of Human Services work to improve the process, including recently lifting a requirement to sue noncustodial parents for child support before being eligible for the grant.

The post National report shows Mississippi improved in education, stagnated in other areas of child well-being appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Donna Echols had just returned to her north Jackson home from her eldest son’s fairytale wedding in the Bahamas and expected to greet the groom’s father who had stayed behind to watch the house and her pets. 

What she didn’t expect was the start of an emotional rollercoaster. 

That night, April 27, Echols found her ex-husband, “Diamond Jim” Mabus, on the living room floor unresponsive. Furniture was strewn around. She called 911 to ask for an ambulance. 

What followed were five calls and an excruciating 90- minute wait before the county’s ambulance provider, American Medical Response, arrived and took Mabus to St. Dominic Hospital. 

Mabus was in the intensive care unit for a week until his death on May 4 at the age of 76. An MRI scan revealed he had suffered a series of small strokes and a large stroke. He left behind two sons from his marriage to Echols, two other sons, and friends and family. 

“It angers me so much,” Echols said about AMR’s drawn-out response time. “It’s so much a death sentence for someone.” 

AMR spokesperson Nicole Michel said the night Echols called, the central Mississippi service area was at a level zero, meaning there were no available ambulances. Eight ambulances and two sprint medics were already responding to other calls, and during the nine o’clock hour, AMR received six service requests, including one for a heart attack. 

Triage protocols are applied to service calls to determine if people are suffering or are likely to suffer a life-threatening illness or injury, the spokesperson said. 

Medical providers say that seconds count when someone suffers a stroke because brain cells immediately start to die. Response time can determine whether someone fully recovers, faces complications such as paralysis or dies.   

Echols made the first 911 call at 9:15 p.m., according to cellphone records shared with Mississippi Today. Within 10 minutes, four Jackson firefighters arrived and started tending to Mabus, but they were not able to render further medical attention because they are not trained EMTs or paramedics, she said. 

When the ambulance still hadn’t arrived, firefighters at the scene called the ambulance provider themselves and were told Echols’ address was in the queue but nobody had been dispatched yet, Echols said.

At one point, Echols called someone she knows who works at Pafford Ambulance, another private company contracted with Madison and Rankin counties, to see if they could send an ambulance. There was an ambulance bus five minutes away, but she was told she needed to get AMR to give permission to Pafford to respond and cross over into Hinds County – AMR’s territory. 

Echols called 911 again, and asked the AMR dispatcher what needed to be done to have Pafford respond instead. They told her there wasn’t anything they could do about that. 

Finally, at 10:25 p.m. the AMR ambulance arrived. Echols saved the home security image of first responders wheeling Mabus out the front door around 10:30 p.m. 

In its contract with Hinds County, AMR is required to meet 85% of its Jackson and Clinton emergency calls in eight minutes or less and outer-Hinds County calls in 18 minutes or less, Mississippi Today reported in 2018 after analyzing the company’s contract. 

That year, there were over 32,000 emergency calls countywide. A review of calls by Mississippi Today and WLBT found the average trip time is an hour and a half. Time starts from when an ambulance is dispatched to when a hospital admits the patient. 

Hinds EMS Coordinator Joey Jamison did not immediately respond to a request to receive a copy of or review the most recent AMR contract. 

Echols’ experience waiting for an ambulance came as providers across the state – including AMR – have shared fears that an ambulance system collapse is near.

A combination of staff shortages, low wages and an incomplete reimbursement system have been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has greatly affected Missisisppi’s ambulence system, Mississippi Today reported. 

In 2018, Mississippi Today reported that “wall time” – the time ambulances wait at a hospital for a bed to become available – often contributes to long response times. AMR agreed that hospital wait times are a challenge its first responders face.  

“Every minute a crew is waiting for a bed is a minute the crew cannot respond to assist a patient outside of the hospital,” the company said in a statement. 

Weeks since Mabus’ death, Echols has more answers about that night, but she wonders whether AMR will make changes to ensure other families don’t have to go through what hers did. 

She understands that staff shortages have plagued multiple fields, including police and fire departments and hospitals, but she wants to know what the company is doing to fix that. 

While efforts are taken to build up staff, Echols sees a mutual agreement or “helping hands” clause in AMR’s contract as a potential solution to help when they are overwhelmed by a high volume of calls.  

For example, such an agreement could have allowed a Pafford Ambulance to come to her home to tend to Mabus sooner, Echols said. 

An AMR spokesperson said mutual aid agreements among ambulance providers in Mississippi tend to be in place for natural disasters or mass casualty events, but not for daily service requests. 

Mutual aid can be requested, but the ambulance provider who receives it isn’t required to respond because their service area takes precedence, the spokesperson said. Providers strongly prefer not to send crews outside the primary service area and often they don’t have the resources to do so. 

The spokesperson did not respond to questions asked about whether it is possible for another ambulance company to respond to a call in Hinds County and whether there is a process for someone to grant permission for an out-of-county ambulance to come to them. 

“What I don’t understand is why AMR has not pushed for mutual aid for a helping hands situation if they can’t do the job,” Echols said. “It makes you ask the question: Are they more concerned about territory and profit than saving lives?” 

“Is it my family today and your family tomorrow?” 

The post ‘It’s so much a death sentence’: Stroke victim waited 90 minutes for an ambulance in Jackson. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll shows one-of-every-five likely Republican primary voters would vote for Democrat Brandon Presley over incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in the November general election.

Many of those voters, however, still don’t know enough about Presley to have a definite opinion.

The poll of Mississippians likely to vote in the 2023 GOP primary showed 21% were likely to vote for Presley if the gubernatorial election were held today, while 70% would support Reeves’ bid for reelection.

The results showed that 8% of participants were undecided, while only 1% said they would not vote in the election.

Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.

To successfully become the first Democrat elected to the Governor’s Mansion since 1999, Presley must encourage a substantial base of Democratic voters to turn out on Election Day. But he’ll also have to convince some traditionally Republican voters to back him instead of Reeves.

Presley has embraced a supporter-led movement to appeal directly to Republican voters, which includes social media accounts and distributing “Republicans for Brandon Presley” bumper stickers.

The poll surveyed favorable and unfavorable sentiments for both candidates. Reeves was 60% favorable to 29% unfavorable, with 10% saying they didn’t know enough about Reeves to say.

Presley, an 15-year elected utility regulator from north Mississippi, was 23% favorable to 27% unfavorable. Notably, a sizable 47% of the poll’s respondents said they didn’t know enough information about Presley to form an opinion.

The poll also showed some differences in regional voter attitudes.

In the northeast congressional district where Presley lives, Reeves overwhelmingly carries Republican primary voters at 68%, while only 15% support Presley. 

In the Delta region, Mississippi’s 2nd congressional district, 38% back Presley, with 52% supporting Reeves — the area with the most significant percentage of likely Republican voters saying they will support the Democratic candidate. 

In the central part of the state, where Reeves lives, 73% support the governor’s reelection campaign, with 23% indicating they back Presley. In the southern district, the governor’s most extensive firewall of support, only 13% back Presley, while 79% said they would vote for Reeves. 

Mississippi does not require voters to register with a political party, meaning voters do not have to participate in the same party primary as they have in previous elections. 

The responses suggest a segment of the state’s Republican voters may defect to Presley in November’s general election, but it also predicts Reeves will be a shoe-in to capture the GOP’s nomination to vie for a second term in office.

The poll showed 59% of respondents would vote for Reeves if the GOP primary for governor were held today, while 33% said they did not know who they would support, and 8% said they would vote for someone else.

Of the 8% who indicated they would support someone else in the GOP primary for governor, the respondents were then asked to name specific candidates who would have their support. Several respondents said they would vote for Reeves’ two primary opponents in 2019 who are not running this year: former state Rep. Robert Foster and former Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr.

None of the respondents named Reeves’ two 2023 primary challengers, John Witcher and David Hardigree.

The Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute poll of 646 registered voters was conducted June 4-7, 2023, and has an overall margin of error of +/- 4.8 percentage points. Siena has an ‘A’ rating in FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of pollsters.

Click here for complete methodology and crosstabs relevant to this story.

The post Poll: 21% of Republican primary voters back Democrat Brandon Presley over GOP Gov. Tate Reeves appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi State University will lead an archaeological excavation of Prospect Hill, a former 5,000-acre plantation in Jefferson County, June 18-28 from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. in collaboration with the Archaeological Conservancy and descendent communities.

At Prospect Hill, near the present-day town of Lorman, approximately 300 formerly enslaved African Americans were sent to a Liberian colony in Western Africa known as “Mississippi-in-Africa” during the 1800s. The plantation owner, Isaac Ross and other major planters had co-founded the Mississippi chapter of the American Colonization Society with that in mind. When he died, his will stipulated his slaves would be freed and that the sale of his plantation would fund their move to Liberia.

The excavation of this site will be led by Shawn Lambert, an assistant professor in the department of anthropology & middle eastern cultures at Mississippi State University. Andrew Whitaker, a cultural anthropologist, will be assisting with the project as well. The organization is requesting that people arrive on June 19 to allow time for preparations.

“I think this is going to be fun and informative,” Lambert said to Mississippi Today. “I think we all will learn a lot together.

“We would like to find any notable features, cultural material, or artifacts that they have left behind so that we can get a better understanding of the history there.”

“We hope at the end of this, to take the materials we find and combine material culture with the documentary that the archaeological conservancy developed of Prospect Hill, with the voices of the descendant communities in Liberia. And, eventually put up an interactive, collaborative exhibition at a museum or at one of the museums at Mississippi State University.”

For more information on how to be involved, contact Lambert at sl2042@msstate.edu or Andrew Whitaker at jaw159@msstate.edu. 

The post MSU leading archaeological dig at former Lorman plantation appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mother Nature and Tennessee rained on the Southern Miss baseball parade that had seemed headed for Omaha and the College World Series. But anyone who was in Hattiesburg Monday night will not soon forget the sendoff 6,000 fans and Tennessee’s players and coaches gave retiring Golden Eagle coach Scott Berry.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: When a season-ending loss is still magical… appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Julie Whitehead of Brandon is a longtime patient of St. Dominic’s behavioral health services. After being admitted to the hospital following a suicide attempt in 2006, Whitehead was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

She was admitted again six times over the next 15 years.

“Each one of those times, if I had not been admitted to St. D, I would be dead,” Whitehead said. 

So when she heard the news the 83-bed unit was closing last week, she took it hard.

She has always considered herself lucky – she works part time and has Medicare and private insurance through her husband. 

“I have resources. I’m not in the fix that a lot of people are in who suffer from mental illness. I’m not dependent on Medicaid and trying to find doctors who will take Medicaid, so I’m never worried about getting care,” she said. 

But when St. Dominic’s announced the closure, her perspective changed.

“I’ve just kind of been in shock because if the beds aren’t there, it doesn’t matter whether I can pay for it or not …” she said.

The unit had been providing inpatient mental health and geriatric psychiatric treatment. But the nonprofit hospital, citing “significant financial challenges” and losses of several million dollars, announced it was discontinuing the services and laying off 5.5% of its total workforce earlier this month.

The hospital’s most recent available tax filing for the fiscal year ending June 2021 showed a loss of $21.7 million for the prior year. That year’s tax filing showed a gain but coincided with hospitals receiving an influx of federal COVID-19 aid. 

Advocates and law enforcement worry that as a result of the closure, more people in the Jackson area who need treatment will end up in jails or without the help they need.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones called the move “disappointing” in a tweet.

“Jails across our state and America are populated with ‘patients’ suffering from mental illnesses. Sheriffs and wardens assume the responsibility of these individuals when in reality, SOME of them should not be in jail but rather a treatment institution,” he wrote. “The risks will increase.”

A spokesperson for St. Dominic said the hospital recognizes mental health is “a significant need.”

“While continuing to meet these needs directly is no longer viable for St. Dominic’s, we are working with partners to help patients access the care they need,” Meredith Bailess said in an emailed statement. “Our health system will continue to advocate for additional state and federal resources to stabilize healthcare providers in Mississippi.”

Although the Mississippi State Hospital opened 20 adult psychiatric beds earlier this year that had been closed due to staffing issues, the average wait time for a bed there is around two days. Bed availability at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is limited, with only 21 adult beds and 12 beds for children. 

Hinds Behavioral Health Services is one of 14 regional community mental health centers in Mississippi. The goal of the centers is to provide services to citizens with mental health issues and, when possible, keep people out of institutions. 

The center runs a 24/7 mobile crisis unit that responds to people in crisis and attempts to stabilize them. 

However, of the 1,196 people the unit came in contact with over the last year, 643 of those required a higher level of care, or admission to an inpatient facility, according to Jamie Evans, the supervisor for the mobile crisis unit at Hinds Behavioral Health Services.

When that happens, there are two options in the metro area for those people to go and immediately receive care: St. Dominic and Merit Health Central. The other options, which are referred to as a “single point-of-entry,” is the 16-bed crisis stabilization unit in Jackson. Another is the unit in Brookhaven, about an hour drive from Jackson. 

Crisis stabilization units are short-term residential treatment facilities run by community health centers where people having a mental health crisis can be stabilized. 

Single point-of-entry locations have memorandums of understanding with the community health center, and patients are able to bypass emergency rooms and be immediately admitted for care. 

“It’s almost as if even if they are full, they secure beds on the side for us, because we’re meeting an individual in crisis, in one of the most vulnerable points in their mental health,” said Evans, explaining the relationship between Hinds Behavioral Health Services and single points of entry. “It’s very fast paced, and we really don’t have time to sit in the ER and wait for a doctor to see them.”

Now, however, the only single point-of-entry option besides the crisis stabilization unit in Jackson is Merit Health Central, which houses around 70 psychiatric beds, according to Evans. 

The services’ closure, which Hinds Behavioral Health Services learned about at the same time the hospital made its public announcement, will leave a substantial gap, Evans and other mental health advocates agreed.

“There will be a huge impact to the systems, especially the elderly and those that find themselves in a crisis situation,” said Angela Ladner, executive director of the Mississippi Psychiatric Association.

She also said the speed at which the closure is happening is “disconcerting.” 

In worse-case scenarios, mentally ill people with nowhere to go can end up in jail – unregulated facilities that are detrimental to people going through a mental health crisis. 

In an attempt to minimize that practice, the Legislature this year passed House Bill 1222, which required mental health training for law enforcement agencies.  

The hospital, which was purchased by the Baton Rouge-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in 2019, announced the unit was closing on June 5 and would stop accepting patients at 7 a.m. the next day.

In the meantime, Evans and other advocates say they will work together to find a way to bridge the gap. Hinds Behavioral Health Services received funding to open a second, 16-bed crisis stabilization unit in Hinds County, but that won’t happen immediately.

Whitehead says her next steps are to collect a “portable” version of her more-than-a-decade worth of medical records to take with her wherever she lands next. 

She guesses the only other thing she can do is “do my best to stay stable.” 

Correction 6/14/23: This story has been updated to reflect that there is also a crisis stabilization unit in Jackson.

Correction 6/14/23: This story has been updated to make clear the difference in wait times for Forensic Services beds at Mississippi State Hospital compared to wait times for acute psychiatric care beds there.

Editor’s note: Julie Whitehead freelanced for the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which is now part of Mississippi Today.

The post Patients, advocates worry more people will end up in jail or without treatment following St. Dominic behavioral health closure appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Even the former president’s attorney general Bill Barr thinks this is really bad for Donald Trump. Sadly, if he had returned the top secret documents, it wouldn’t have come to this. This isn’t a left-wing witch hunt. This is Trump’s fault. If you haven’t read the indictment, please take the time to do so.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Reflection appeared first on Mississippi Today.