http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-parishitandrun_27met.ART0.State.Edition2.4a9f45f.htmlBy RICHARD ABSHIRE / The Dallas Morning News
[email protected]PARIS, Texas – With a black man dead and two white men in jail on murder charges, race relations are again under strain in this northeast Texas county seat, still haunted by high-profile lynchings from its distant past and protests over the jailing of a black teenager two years ago.
Motorists found Brandon Demon "Big Boy" McClelland's mangled body early Sept. 16 in northeast Lamar County, near a curve in a two-lane county road. Authorities first suspected the 24-year-old was the victim of a hit and run, killed by a speeding lumber truck.
But suspicions soon turned to the victim's white drinking buddies: Shannon Keith Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley. Witnesses told police that the men admitted running down Mr. McClelland after an argument. Both suspects maintain their innocence.
District Attorney Gary Young, who is white, said there's no evidence that the killing was a hate crime. But his office welcomes any information on the case, he said.
That doesn't satisfy friends and family of the victim and other members of the black community, including a contingent of the New Black Panthers, who suspect a cover-up and see shades of the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. a decade ago in Jasper, Texas.
"Gary Young decided from the start it was not a hate crime," said Brenda Cherry, who is black and a co-founder of Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality. "They're not going to do anything to make Paris look bad. That's the main thing around here."
The victim's mother, Jackie McClelland, also believes race played a part in her son's death, noting the extent of his injuries.
"I think it was a hate crime," she said. "We couldn't have an open casket."
'Wake-up call'
With a population of 26,000, Paris is 73 percent white and 22 percent black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A monument to the Confederacy dominates the front lawn of the recently remodeled Lamar County Courthouse, from which a mob seized two black brothers and killed them in 1920. That was the last of at least half a dozen lynchings in the county.
"You can't talk about Paris without mentioning the lynchings," said William Harris, the county's first assistant district attorney.
Two years ago, Shaquanda Cotton was the talk of the town. Paris found itself in the national media spotlight when the black teenager was sent to a Texas Youth Commission lockup for pushing a teacher's aide. Months earlier, the same judge gave a white teen probation for burning her family's house down.
"That was a wake-up call," said Pike Burkhart, who is white and president of the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce. "We don't perceive ourselves as a racially divided community. We want to make sure we have more dialogue between our black and white communities."
Ms. Cotton spent a year in a juvenile lockup and was freed after protests alleging racial bias. Still, authorities insist they followed the law.
"We did nothing wrong," said district attorney spokesman Allan Hubbard.
Friends or foes?
Mr. McClelland was last seen alive drinking with Mr. Finley and Mr. Crostley, both 27.
The men were thought to be friends. Mr. McClelland was convicted of perjury for lying on Mr. Finley's behalf in a manslaughter case. Mr. Finley went to prison from 2004 to 2007 for shooting a friend in a Paris park; Mr. McClelland was sentenced to a two-year term.
After midnight on Sept. 16, the suspects told police, the men ran out of beer and drove to Oklahoma for more. On the way back, they said, there was an argument over whether Mr. McClelland was too drunk to drive, and he got out of Mr. Finley's pickup, taking a couple of beers with him.
They said that was the last they saw of him.
But investigators found human blood on the undercarriage of Mr. Finley's truck, according to an affidavit filed Sept. 24, and witnesses quoted Mr. Finley and Mr. Crostley as saying that they ran over Mr. McClelland on purpose and dragged him "about 40 feet."
For Ms. Cherry and others in the community, that sounds like what happened a decade ago to Mr. Byrd.
There are differences, however: Mr. Byrd was tied to a pickup and dragged for three miles, while Mr. McClelland was struck and dragged underneath the truck for several feet. Also, two of the three men convicted of killing Mr. Byrd had ties to white supremacist groups and prison gangs. Prison officials say there are no such connections to the suspects in this case, despite rumors to the contrary.
"The fact that they were white and he was black does not alone constitute a hate crime," said Mr. Hubbard, the district attorney spokesman. "We can't act on speculation, and there's too much of that going on by people on blogs and elsewhere who are treating rumor as fact."
And regardless of the hate crime designation, he noted, the punishment for the murder charges they face wouldn't change: five to 99 years or life in prison.
Seeking justice
Both suspects were arrested about a week after Mr. McClelland's death and are being held in the Lamar County Jail, with bail set at $500,000 apiece. Mr. Finley was returned to Texas from Wichita, Kan., where he was captured after a manhunt.
Mr. Hubbard said the case will go to the grand jury in November and the earliest likely trial date is next spring.
While some have called for prosecutors to seek the death penalty, the victim's mother said she doesn't believe in capital punishment and just wants justice.
"We want to make sure that anybody that was involved in this gets the right justice, not just a couple of years," said Ms. McClelland. "I think they should get life without parole."
Creola Cotton, Shaquanda's mother, doesn't believe in the death penalty, either. But she worries that next spring when the heat is off, prosecutors might let Mr. Finley and Mr. Crostley plead guilty in exchange for light sentences.
"We just want fair justice," Ms. Cotton said. "We don't get that too much here."
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