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Lisa Darracott recently found her 2000 yearbook from her junior year at Itawamba Agricultural High School with an entire page reserved for her best friend since kindergarten, Leesa Gray. 

In half a page of writing, Gray thanked Darracott for being a great friend who supported her and made her laugh, but Gray didn’t get the opportunity to finish the message. 

The final bell let students out for the summer. Weeks later in June, members of the Dorsey community and students learned that Gray was murdered. 

“For those of us who were around when it happened, it still feels like it just happened,” Darracott said. “It doesn’t feel like 22 years.”

On Wednesday, Darracott will travel to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman for the lethal injection execution of Gray’s killer, Thomas Loden Jr., who received the death sentence for Gray’s rape and murder. 

Family members, including Gray’s mother Wanda Farris, are expected to witness the execution. 

Darracott remembers Gray as a friendly person with a nice smile who liked to do makeup and style hair. They could look at each other and know what was on each other’s mind, she said. 

Gray finished the school year as junior class vice president and had just left work at her family’s eatery, Comer’s Restaurant, when Loden abducted her. 

She was a member of groups that reflected many interests: chorus, juniorettes and Future Educators of America, according to her obituary. Gray explored a future in business as a member of Future Business Leaders of America and secretary of DECA, the competitive student entrepreneurship organization. 

“She was a sweet Christian girl, loved the Lord, had a lot of life ahead of her,” Wanda Farris told the Associated Press last month. 

Gray left behind her mother, stepfather Mike Farris, father John Gray and younger brother James Farris. Mississippi Today reached out to several family members, but they were not available for comment. 

The Dorsey community was left reeling after Gray’s death on June 23, 2000, the Daily Journal reported at the time. A day earlier when she went missing after work, her family, community and law enforcement launched a search before finding her body in Loden’s van. 

Loden, a gunnery sergeant and Marine Corps recruiter, was arrested and pleaded guilty.

Over 1,000 people attended Gray’s funeral services at her high school. 

The senior class of 2001 and senior youth group at her church, Bethel Baptist Church, were honorary pallbearers. 

Finishing high school without her was hard, Darracott said, and Gray’s absence was felt at milestones like prom and graduation. 

When Darracott married, she pictured Gray there as her maid of honor. If Gray were still alive, Darracott wondered what kind of career her friend would have, the person she would marry and whether she would have children of her own. 

“There was always a hole where she should have been,” Darracott said. 

Over the years, Gray’s family, friends and community members have kept up with developments in Loden’s case, which has included state and federal appeals over the last two decades. 

Last month, Farris and several friends traveled to Jackson for a hearing before U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, who is hearing a case challenging Mississippi’s use of a three-drug mix for lethal injection. 

Loden joined that case and the judge considered whether to grant Loden a stay until it was decided, but Wingate ultimately denied that request, a week before the scheduled execution. 

“I forgave him a long time ago,”  Farris told the news outlets last week. “You need to forgive to move on. You can’t keep all that bitterness inside.”

A prayer vigil is scheduled for Wednesday, 5 p.m. the day of the execution, at Bethel Baptist Church in Fulton. People are asked to wear purple to show support for Gray. 

The post ‘It doesn’t feel like 22 years,’ says friend of murder victim as killer’s execution nears appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As I write this, Coach Mike Leach is in critical condition at UMMC. The outpouring of love and respect for him is coming in from all corners of the nation — and Mississippi. Coach Leach is a Mississippi and national treasure. My heart and prayers go out to him, his family and his medical team. Today, we’re all Team Leach.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Team Leach appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Occasionally, but not nearly often enough, an item crosses your desk that seems perfectly appropriate.

Here’s one: The United States Tennis Association (USTA) and Southern Tennis Foundation (STF) have seen fit to create an annual college scholarship to honor the late Jim Warren, former president of USTA-Mississippi. 

It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate way to honor Warren, a Ripley native and long-time Jackson resident. Warren, a graduate of Southern Miss and Ole Miss law, dedicated much of his adult life to tennis and higher education.

“That’s just perfect,” Southern Miss President Joe Paul, a close friend of Warren’s, said. “Jim donated so much of his adult life to the sport of tennis and in support of higher education. Jim would be tickled about this scholarship.”

Malinda Warren certainly is. Malinda and Jim Warren married in May of 2004 after a one-year courtship. Malinda was a devoted, competitive tennis player. Jim had never played. He took up the game at age 41.

“Because I was obsessed with tennis, Jim wanted to learn to play,” Malinda Warren says. “So he took up the game, took a lot of lessons and became skilled enough to enjoy playing. We played a lot of mixed doubles together. But he often joked that his skill set was such that he was much more adept at the administrative part of the sport than the actual playing.”

So, as Jim Warren was wont to do when he became involved with any pursuit, he dove head-first into the governance of the sport. 

“Someone asked Jim to be on some committee and pretty soon he was running the committee,” Malinda Warren said. “He just kept moving on up.”

Boy, did he. When Jim Warren died suddenly at his home in August of 2021, he was serving on the USTA’s Southern Board of Directors. In 2015 and 2016, he served as president of USTA-Mississippi. He was a member of the USTA’s national Constitution and Rules Committee. He chaired the USTA Southern Constitution and Rules Committee. No telling how high he might have risen up the USTA’s administrative ladder. And all that is just touching the surface. He also served as a tennis official at various competitions. 

The USTA also has honored Warren with a plaque on the Avenue of Aces, the walkway just in front of Louis Armstrong Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where the U.S. Open is contested. The fully endowed Jim Warren Scholarship, worth $1,000 a year, will go to worthy students who have been involved in tennis during their high school years. Primary criteria will be academic achievement and promise, civic involvement and character. Selection will be made by the STF’s College Scholarships Committee.

Jim Warren’s friends – and this writer is one – are not at all surprised that he would take up a sport so late in life and then become a driving force within it. That was Jim.

One spring day as a high school senior at Ripley, he decided to visit Southern Miss, where he had never been. That’s a 550-mile round trip from the top end of the state to nearly the bottom. He went by himself, driving his little Toyota pickup truck. Once in Hattiesburg, he met a co-ed who showed him around the campus and he immediately took a liking to the place. Indeed, he liked it so much that he decided to go meet the president, who was then Aubrey Lucas. Warren had no appointment.

But Warren walked into Lucas’s office, introduced himself, shared his high school credentials and his vision for his future. He left Lucas’s office with a USM Presidential Scholarship, and, Lucas will tell you, “a friend for life.”

Warren became president of the student body and president of his fraternity (Kappa Sigma). He later would serve on the USM Foundation’s Board of Directors and as president of the Southern Miss Alumni Association.

He was a do-er and a leader, Jim Warren was. Besides his law firm, he also held leadership positions in the Mississippi Bar Association, River Hills Club and his church and Sunday school. You see, if Jim Warren was going to be involved in anything, he was going to have a say and an influence.

The post The Jim Warren Scholarship: A perfect way to honor this guy appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today political reporter Bobby Harrison talks to House Constitution Chair Fred Shanks, R-Brandon, about the state’s initiative process and why the Rankin County lawmaker is optimistic that legislation will pass during the 2023 session to revive it. Shanks also weighs in on other issues, saying the Legislature can both cut taxes again in 2023 and provide one-time rebates to Mississippians.

The post Podcast: House Constitution Chair Shanks hopes new initiative wins 2023 legislative approval appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s historic growth in state tax collections is slowing — at least for a month.

This past month the state collected $518.8 million in taxes and other revenue compared to $531.9 million in November 2021.

Does the November revenue report represent the start of a slowdown in Mississippi tax collections that have grown at an unprecedented rate for more than a year?

It is a fair question? After all, Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and others are citing the unprecedented growth in state revenue as a reason to enact a tax cut that will take about $2 billion yearly out of state coffers.

The November report recently released by the staff of the Legislature Budget Committee represents the first slowdown in monthly revenue collections for the state since July 2021 when tax collections were less than the amount collected a year earlier in July 2020.

Granted, folks who study Mississippi revenue collection trends are fond of saying that one month does not a trend make. The state saw increased collections for 16 months after that slowdown in July 2021. So, there is a good chance that the collections will bounce back in December.

But as sure as night follows day, the slowdown in Mississippi tax collections eventually will occur. History tells us that.

Revenue grew by 9.54% during the fiscal year that ended on June 30 and by an unprecedented 15.9% the previous year.

The result of the strong growth is that the state has a revenue surplus of $3.9 billion going into the 2023 legislative session that begins in early January. Having $4 billion in reserves is staggering considering the total state support budget, which consists primarily of general tax collections, such as the sales tax on retail items and the income tax, is $7.86 billion for the current fiscal year.

A small portion of those reserve funds, about $450 million, are COVID-19 federal relief funds and money from lawsuit settlements, but most of the funds are the result of a boon in state tax collections.

The net result of those large reserves is that state political leaders are feeling pretty good and bragging on their governance prowess.

“We are in a great financial position,” Gunn, R-Clinton, said recently, echoing similar comments of Reeves.

“We can’t neglect or ignore the fact that conservative spending led to this type of financial situation,” Gunn continued. “We have rejected the attempts to grow government over the last many years and this (revenue surplus) has been the result of that.”

That is all well and good except for the fact most states have had similar unprecedented surpluses. California, for example, a state that Mississippi politicians like to criticize for its liberal policies, had a whopping $98 billion surplus, though, it appears that the West Coast state’s tax collections already are slowing.

But before slowing, California provided one-time rebates of between $200 and $1,500 to individuals earning less than $250,000 and to households earning less than $500,000.

Multiple states, controlled by Republicans and Democrats, have provided rebates.

In Mississippi, the taxpayers have not yet reaped any direct cash benefits from the massive surplus. In the 2022 session, legislators approved the largest tax cut in state history – a $525 million cut to the income tax. But that tax cut will not be fully phased in until 2026. Taxpayers can receive a small monthly benefit from the tax cut starting in January if they change their payroll deductions. Otherwise, taxpayers will receive no benefit from the tax cut until they file their tax returns in early 2024.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has proposed the Legislature provide a rebate in the 2023 session. Reeves and Gunn are proposing the complete elimination of the income tax. Such a cut will take an additional $2 billion out of the state treasury on top of the $525 million tax cut made last year.

During much of the 1990s, thanks to the start and incredibly rapid expansion of casino gambling, Mississippi experienced a prolonged period of historic revenue growth.

But by the early 2000s, as a recession hit the country that was especially bad in Mississippi, the Legislature and then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove were having to cut budgets.

That is not to say that the Legislature and governor should not look for innovative ways to spend the surplus for the betterment of the state and its citizens.

A reasonable debate can be had on whether it is better to return funds to citizens or use the surplus to address the litany of problems facing the state. But it is safe to assume tax cuts that take more than $2.5 billion yearly out of state coffers will have a lasting impact, especially when revenue collections slow as they most assuredly will.

The post Are revenue collections already slowing as state leaders consider massive tax cut? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Politicians have the power to change history through leadership and solid public policy. They shouldn’t try to rewrite it.

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In my first week at Mississippi Today in September of 2018, I sat on the floor in the middle of the newsroom, federal financial reports from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program splayed in front of me. “I am investigating our state’s TANF program,” I wrote in an email to my editor.  “Where is the money going and where is it not? We know the TANF program has not improved our rate of poverty: is that an unfortunate reality or the result of negligence? Even by design?”

Over the last four years, I’ve sought that answer. 

What followed was the largest public fraud case in state history.

Officials stole or misspent tens of millions of these federal dollars that could have been used to provide food, child care, workforce training or cash assistance to tens of thousands of vulnerable families. We first broke the story in 2020 about the role that former NFL quarterback Brett Favre played in two pet projects that received welfare funds.

But it wasn’t until I got my hands on some private text messages earlier this year that Mississippians learned just how involved their governor was at the time.

“I will open a hole,” then-Gov. Phil Bryant texted Favre, days before millions of welfare dollars began flowing to the athlete’s pharmaceutical venture.

Our series, The Backchannel, provided a groundbreaking glimpse into the inner workings of state government and altered the course of the ongoing investigation, pressuring officials to acknowledge just how high up the corruption went. 

Mississippi Today is relentless in its pursuit of answers. But the reporting isn’t cheap. In the last four years, I’ve filed more than 140 public records requests, which have cost thousands of dollars, and traveled everywhere from Marks to Kiln to tell Mississippi’s story.

You can help us continue this work:

Most of all, keep reading. You keep reading, and we’ll keep going to uncover the truth.

Now through December 31, the Maddox Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s education program, and additional supporters will match your new recurring donation dollar-for-dollar, combined up to $54,000. That means your $25 turns into $100 to continue telling your stories.

Maddox Foundation was founded by Dan Maddox in 1968. He and his wife, Margaret Maddox, had a commitment to young people, a love of nature and a vision for making their corner of the world a better place. Maddox Foundation President Robin Hurdle has continued their legacy, which lives on through the current work of the foundation. 

Maddox Foundation, located in Hernando, has made many signature investment grants into youth development. These investments include renovating and supporting the Margaret Maddox Family YMCA; putting an internet-connected computer in every public classroom in Mississippi; creating innovative places for children to learn and play; establishing the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi; and funding the Education Director position and the MTV exhibit at the Grammy Museum Mississippi.

The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation (JLFF), based in Berkeley, CA, supports organizations that advance social justice by promoting world-changing work in investigative journalism, the arts, documentary film and democracy. As a small foundation, JLFF’s investment in NewsMatch allows the Foundation to make a difference across the entire field of local investigative journalism.

The Hewlett Foundation’s Education program supports media outlets that strengthen the information ecosystem around our country’s K-12 education systems. They believe that local communities are a key part of improving teaching and learning opportunities for every student.

The post Here’s how you can support Mississippi Today’s relentless pursuit for answers appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Read in English: Twelve Mississippi hospitals earn ‘A’ rating from hospital safety group

La organización sin fines de lucro Leapfrog Group publicó sus calificaciones de seguridad hospitalaria para el otoño de 2022, y 12 hospitales de Mississippi, incluido el Hospital Greenwood Leflore con problemas financieros, recibieron una calificación A.

La calificación, que se asigna dos veces al año a unos 3,000 hospitales generales de atención aguda en todo el país, se basa en cómo los hospitales y otras organizaciones de atención médica protegen a sus pacientes de errores, lesiones, accidentes e infecciones. El puntaje proviene del desempeño de los hospitales en más de 30 medidas nacionales de los Centros de Servicios de Medicare y Medicaid (CMS), la Encuesta de hospitales Leapfrog y otros datos.

El hospital más grande del estado y el único centro médico académico obtuvo una C por cuarto año consecutivo.

Ningún hospital de Mississippi recibió una calificación F y un hospital recibió una D: Merit Health Biloxi. Cada grado se basa en el desempeño de los hospitales en cinco categorías: infecciones, problemas con la cirugía, problemas de seguridad, prácticas para prevenir errores y médicos, enfermeras y personal del hospital.

“Tomadas en conjunto, esas medidas de desempeño producen una calificación de una sola letra que representa el desempeño general de un hospital para mantener a los pacientes a salvo de daños y errores médicos prevenibles”, afirma su sitio web.

Según el grupo, 250,000 personas mueren cada año por errores prevenibles en los hospitales.

Aquí está el desglose de las calificaciones de los hospitales de Mississippi:

Andrés Fuentes

Andrés Fuentes es periodista de FOX8-TV en Nueva Orleans y traductor de Mississippi Today. Antes de que el nativo de Nueva Orleans regresara, era periodista para WLOX-TV en Biloxi, Mississippi.

The post Doce hospitales de Mississippi obtienen la calificación ‘A’ del grupo de seguridad hospitalaria appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Larger regional hospitals in Mississippi – where the sickest patients often get their care – are full, and state health officials are begging Mississippians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu to protect themselves and the health care system.

“It’s the inability to transfer (patients) to a higher level of care – our Level 1 and Level 2 hospitals are really being swamped,” State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said Thursday. “… We’ve been having a lot of transfers go out of state.” 

Hospitals in neighboring states are also in similar situations and not able to accept transfers.

As of noon, some hospitals in Tennessee were not accepting transfers, said Jim Craig, senior deputy and director of health protection at the Mississippi State Department of Health.

Available intensive care unit (ICU) beds around Mississippi are dwindling, with 65 beds available statewide – a trend similar to the past two winters, said Edney. 

As of Thursday, only 27 ICU beds were available at larger hospitals. 

“That’s 27 beds for everything – trauma, strokes, heart attacks. Not just flu and COVID,” he said. “We want to protect those beds as best we can.” 

As of 1 p.m. Thursday, the University of Mississippi Medical Center – the state’s only Level 1 trauma center –  was at capacity, meaning beds are full, said a spokesperson for UMMC.  

St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson is also experiencing issues with capacity.

“St. Dominic’s is working diligently to explore every possible solution to meet the care and safety needs of patients in the communities we serve,” said Meredith Bailess, the hospital’s marketing director. 

Edney, along with State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers, urged Mississippians to get their bivalent COVID-19 booster, which includes a component of the original virus strain and a component of the omicron variant to provide better protection against the current dominant strain of the virus. 

“This (bivalent booster) is a very important booster vaccine to provide protection not only against infection but also protection from those hospitalizations and protect us from deaths,” said Byers. “It’s extremely important for us now, especially the most vulnerable people in our population, to make sure everyone who is eligible is up to date with the bivalent booster vaccine.” 

Mississippi’s bivalent booster uptake has been low, as has the nation’s.

Mississippi is seeing “very high” flu activity, and Edney and Byers also encouraged people to get their flu shots. 

Mississippians can make an appointment for COVID-19 and flu vaccines at the health department website. Vaccine appointments are also available at the federal website vaccines.gov. 

People can get the updated COVID-19 booster even if they have not gotten an earlier booster shot. That means that if you got two doses of Pfizer, Moderna or Noravax, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson, you qualify for the new booster as long as two months have passed since your last dose. You are also eligible if you got a booster dose more than two months ago.

“Do what you can to protect yourself and your family so you don’t wind up in the health care system when it’s under stress,” said Edney. 

The post With hospitals under strain, health officials beg people to get COVID, flu vaccines appeared first on Mississippi Today.