Mississippi

(AP) --- By her own telling, Mississippi authorities provided Carolyn Bryant Donham with preferential treatment rather than prosecution after her encounter with Emmett Till led to the lynching of the Black teenager in the summer of 1955.

CRYSTAL SPRINGS, Miss. (AP) — U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Harold Duane Poole was waiting with his semiautomatic service rifle — and an explanation — when deputies arrived at his sprawling wooded property on a warm spring night last year and found a bullet-riddled body near the driveway.

A veteran of the DEA’s military-style commando teams, Poole acknowledged he fatally shot a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land – yet again – “out of his mind” and threatening him with a rock.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — On a few occasions, Sitaniel Wimbley’s mother grew manic in her front yard. When neighbors were met with screaming and cursing on their street in Natchez, Mississippi, they would dial 911.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — When Antonio McGowan left the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman after serving 17 years, he was free for the first time since he was 15. But as an adult finally out from behind bars, he immediately found himself confined to menial labor.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi House and Senate voted by wide margins Tuesday to approve plans to redraw legislative districts to account for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

The House has 122 districts, and the Senate has 52. Republicans hold wide majorities in both chambers and the redistricting plans are unlikely to change that. The next elections for four-year terms are in November 2023.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Thousands of people in Mississippi continue to be jailed for long periods while waiting to go on trial because they are too poor to afford bail, judges may deny bail altogether or public defenders might not be available when they’re needed, according to a new report from a group that advocates for the rights of the incarcerated.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The mayor of Mississippi’s capital city has ordered the closure of city hall and other offices due to a surge in new confirmed coronavirus cases, particularly the highly contagious delta and omicron variants.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s new executive order closing offices went into effect Wednesday. Only essential employees will continue to work in person, he said. The order will stay in place until at least next Wednesday.

LUCEDALE, Miss. (AP) — A teenager said she could hear the terrifying sounds of other vehicles crashing around — and on top of — the pickup truck where she and her mother were trapped after the truck plunged into a dark, muddy pit when a Mississippi highway collapsed during torrential rain brought by Hurricane Ida.

“I saw a black hole, then I blacked out and I woke up and my mom was leaned over toward me. She was choking on her blood and she couldn’t breathe or anything,” 16-year-old Emily Williams of Wiggins, Mississippi, told WLOX-TV in a video call from her hospital room.

YAZOO CITY, Miss. (AP) — Much of the South is again at risk of severe weather Tuesday, forecasters say, after tornadoes struck parts of the region Sunday night and Monday, causing heavy damage in some parts of Mississippi.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Louisiana has stopped asking the federal government for its full allotment of COVID-19 vaccine. About three-quarters of Kansas counties have turned down new shipments of the vaccine at least once over the past month. And in Mississippi, officials asked the federal government to ship vials in smaller packages so they don’t go to waste.

As the supply of coronavirus vaccine doses in the U.S. outpaces demand, some places around the country are finding there’s such little interest in the shots, they need to turn down shipments.