Fun-loving Sam Pollard Jr. won friends in his Jackson community but he had serious dreams of owning his own home.
Those dreams ended abruptly Feb. 25, 2021, when a close friend shot the 32-year-old dead on North Prentiss Street in west Jackson, leaving Pollard’s three children – two girls and a boy – to bear the trauma of violence that has scarred so many youth in Mississippi’s capital city.
Read MoreMalcolm Stuckey was pulling up in a burgundy Pontiac Grand Prix to his friend’s birthday party in Chicago’s once-prosperous Englewood neighborhood when a bullet fired from a gun, bought 840 miles away in Mississippi, tore into his brain.
Read MoreThe near-stagnant pace of federal gun law reform and lack of gun possession restrictions in Mississippi make it easy to get a gun in the Magnolia State — and for hundreds of them to end up on Chicago streets every year.
Read MoreFor close to seven years, a Mississippi man bought firearms in and around Natchez before sending them to contacts in Chicago, many of them family members he grew up with.
Read MoreGREENWOOD, Miss. — Do not call Brittany Gray, Kenderick Cox and Marcellus Gray activists. The Greenwood natives prefer to be called who they are — members of the community.
Read More“I don't know how to tell you this, but your brother was shot.”
Michael Taylor’s heartbeat quickened. He was having difficulty breathing.
JACKSON, Miss. — Cassio Batteast, a community advocate in Jackson, recently sat down with 20 of the students in the local school district who were causing the most trouble.
Read MoreJACKSON, Miss. — Tommie Mabry was 12 when a bullet grazed him while he was burglarizing a home he thought was empty.
Read MoreJackson, Mississippi, is looking at its highest homicide rate in 20 years from a public health perspective. Its response could be a model for the rest of the South
Read MoreJackson, Miss. — She remembers the frantic knocks at the door and the family friend who waited almost hysterical on the other side.
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