Yesterday evening approximately 2,000 people turned out for George County Sheriff Garry Welford’s visitation at Shady Grove Baptist Church. According to the article, about 1,500 bottles of water were handed out by 6:30 p.m. by the American Red Cross. The wait was somewhere around 90 minutes to get into the church. Here is a testimony to the kind of man Garry Welford was:
The Rev. Bruce Mckenzie, pastor of Shady Grove Baptist Church, said Welford was a dedicated church member.
“I have talked to a lot of criminals in my tenure here. The criminals I’ve talked to, they respected Garry. When you have the respect of the criminals, the lawbreakers, the law abiders, that says a lot about the sheriff,” Mckenzie said.
His funeral is this morning at 10:00 a.m. Thousands are expected to attend.
Update, 2:00 p.m. – Judge Norman C. Howell denied bond for Brandi Williams and Christopher Baxter. They both came into the courtroom with no shoes on, still wearing the clothes they had been arrested in. Reporters asked Baxter if he knew the sheriff had been run over, he said, “No”. Williams did not respond to questions. Brandi Williams was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Put your big girl panties on and deal with it.” Well, let’s see her deal with life in prison or being placed on death row.
Update 1:33 p.m. - Williams and Baxter are supposedly enroute from Hattiesburg to Lucedale for arraignment on the charges of capital murder of Sheriff Garry Welford. The charges carry the penalty of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Yesterday afternoon a terrible tragedy struck my community. George County Sheriff Garry Welford was in the process of laying out a spike strip to stop fleeing criminals when the truck they were driving struck him. He was Lifeflighted to the University of South Alabama Medical Center, where he died.
Over 200 officers from numerous agencies, such as: Mississippi Bureau of Investigation; George, Greene, Jackson, and Harrison County Sheriff’s Departments; and the Mississippi Highway Patrol searched all night for the losers. The scumbags, 18-year-old Brandi Nicole Williams and 24-year-old Christopher Baxter, were arrested at 6:20 this morning by the MS Highway Patrol and are now in jail in Hattiesburg, MS, where they have both been charged with one count each of capital murder. The reason they were fleeing? This is it:
Baxter was wanted on a warrant for failure to appear for sentencing in a meth manufacturing case in which he pleaded guilty.
Williams had recently entered a pre-trial diversion probation program on grand larceny charges in Jackson and George counties.
Below the fold I’ve posted pictures of the criminals. Let this be a lesson to those of you who like doing drugs or manufacturing drugs. God be with these criminals, for no one else will.
I’m sure you have all heard of Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official who was forced to resign because of a story she told to the NAACP in March at a Georgia banquet. Here is a link to the video in case you haven’t watched it.
The story Ms. Sherrod was telling was one about her personal struggle with racism and how she overcame it to do the right thing: Help a farmer (who just happened to be white) who was struggling and in need. According to Andrew Breitbart, the whole purpose of posting the video online was not to out Ms. Sherrod as racist, but to show the hypocrisy of the NAACP in its condemnation of the Tea Party as “racist”. The video shows the crowd cheering as Ms. Sherrod explains that she “didn’t give [the farmer] the full force of what I could do”.
Ms. Sherrod states she was called and told by the White House and to submit her resignation by Blackberry immediately, because of the video. The NAACP, who had full possession of the entire video, even jumped on the bandwagon condemning her:
We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.
Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race.
We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.
Now it appears the head of the USDA is reconsidering her ouster. Also, the NAACP is saying they were “snookered”:
With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.
Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.
The fact is Ms. Sherrod did help the white farmers mentioned in her speech. They personally credit her with helping to save their family farm.
This goes beyond the pale. The NAACP had full, unfettered access to the video from the beginning, yet they blame their knee-jerk reaction on the Tea Party and Breitbart. The NAACP has long outlived its usefulness and is no longer a nonprofit, civil rights group. They are, and have been for several years, a political entity and should have their tax-exempt status revoked. The very racism they say lives within the Tea Party in fact permeates the NAACP, and they should be called out on it.
Shirley Sherrod should have not only her job back, but get a promotion because of the reaction by the Obama Administration. I commend her for recognizing what she did several years ago was wrong and overcoming it.
What Patriotism Means
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president. — Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
