Jackson, Mississippi—On a Sunday morning in June, just before dawn, two cars filled with white teenagers set-out for Jackson, Mississippi, on what the district attorney says was a mission to find and severely hurt a black individual.
The teens, who had been coming from an all-night party, eventually found their victim in a parking lot on the western side of town.
James Anderson, aged 49, was standing in a hotel parking lot when the teens rushed and beat him to near death. Hotel security workers claimed that the boys, while punching and kicking a fallen Anderson, were repeatedly screaming racial epithets, including “White Power!”
Robert Smith, the District Attorney of Hinds County, Mississippi, roughly half the teens then climbed into their large Ford 250 pickup truck, floored the gas, and ran right over Anderson, killing him instantly.
Mississippi officials are calling this horrible act a racially motivated murder.
What the gang of teens never realized was that a surveillance camera was focused on the parking lot that night and a number of their malicious attacks, including the murder, were captured on videotape.
The group of teens that night was led by 18-year-old Deryl Dedmon of Brandon, Mississippi. Dedmon is currently regarded as the individual who led and instigated the attack earlier in the evening and the driver of the car that struck and killed Anderson.
District Attorney Smith, after listening to witness accounts, has reiterated Dedmon’s intentions of seeking out and killing an African-America. “He was not remorseful. He was laughing, laughing about the killing,” said district attorney Smith.
The teen, just 18 years of age, has been charged with murder and faces a possible double life sentence. A second teen involved, 18-year-old John rice, has been charged with simple assault, for his role in the beating of Anderson. The other teens in the group have not been charged. As for Anderson’s family; they have decided to remain silent for now, as they are trying to come to grips with a brutal crime they thought was in the state’s past.
