B.J. Johnson Update: Grand Jury Findings to Become Public Thursday

February 11, 2009 By

Well, it’s about time.  The grand jury in the Billy Joe John­son case will release their find­ings of a two-month inves­ti­ga­tion into his death this Thurs­day at 1:30 P.M. CST.  It will take place at the George County Jus­tice Court build­ing in Lucedale.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Local Tagged With: ,

Saturday Summary for 12-20-2008

December 20, 2008 By
pen-paper

pen-paperA lot of things have hap­pened this week:  From the iden­tity of poor lit­tle Caylee Marie Anthony’s body to the gov­ern­ment bailout of the auto indus­try to the Illi­nois gov­er­nor being accused of cor­rup­tion.  Need­less to say the media out­lets have had a busy week.  And locally, we have had our share of tragedy.

Tragedy in a Small Town

I’ve already writ­ten a cou­ple of posts about it, so I’ll just pro­vide some updated infor­ma­tion that our local paper has put out.  Appar­ently, Billy Joe John­son was a sus­pect in an attempted breaking-and-entering that hap­pen less then 5 min­utes ear­lier.  That is why he was dri­ving fast through town, ran a stop light, and then ran a stop sign.

The Dis­trict Attor­ney finally came out yes­ter­day after­noon with an inves­ti­ga­tion synopsis.

The report said that a girl, a minor, and accord­ing to friends, Johnson’s for­mer girl­friend, was alone at the Lamar Street home when she heard some­one attempt­ing to break into the front door. She looked out the win­dow, the report said, and saw John­son get­ting into his truck parked across the street from her home.

He then fled south away from the scene and she called the cops.  They were in the process of tak­ing her and her mother to the police sta­tion to file charges against him when they received the call for assis­tance from the deputy sher­iff who pulled Billy Joe over.  He had just shot himself.

Rest of the story is here.  I think the offi­cer and his fam­ily now need an apol­ogy from the NAACP and Johnson’s fam­ily for try­ing to impli­cate him in the shoot­ing.  It should be clear now as to the cir­cum­stances behind Billy Joe’s death.  The case should be closed.

Hol­i­day Mad­ness about to ensue

On another note (and a hap­pier one), today I’ll be spend­ing the day shop­ping for Christ­mas gifts.  I hope every­one else stays home — haha!  (Some­how I don’t think that will hap­pen).  So wish me luck on the shop­ping.  Hope­fully there will still be some gifts left.  And for a lit­tle bit of hol­i­day fun, here’s a funny song to sing along with!

Filed Under: Local, News, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Billy Joe Johnson Update: Questions being raised about wounds

December 18, 2008 By

A local news­pa­per, The Sun Her­ald, has this arti­cle this morn­ing regard­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of local high school foot­ball star, Billy Joe John­son.  Appar­ently the family’s lawyer and the NAACP are con­cerned about some of the wounds on the body of Billy Joe John­son.  The civil rights group is also pay­ing for a sec­ond autopsy after the state examiner’s office is com­plete with their autopsy.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Local, Sports Tagged With: , ,

Local football player shot, investigation underway

December 16, 2008 By

I didn’t get to com­ment on this imme­di­ately as when I first heard of it, I was on my way out on sea tri­als and was gone until Sat­ur­day morn­ing.  Since then, I’ve been try­ing to read up on the story and get some facts.  And that’s all I’m going to com­ment on right now — the facts.

Here’s what we know so far:  At 5:34 a.m. on Mon­day, Decem­ber 8, George County Sher­iff Depart­ment offi­cer Joe Sul­li­van sees a red truck run a red light, headed south through the inter­sec­tion of Win­ter and Church streets in Lucedale.  The truck pulls in to the Ben­ndale Car­pet park­ing lot after run­ning a stop sign, and the dri­ver — Billy Joe John­son — gets out and approaches the offi­cer.  Billy Joe tells the offi­cer he’s on his way to see his sick mother and that’s why he ran the light and stop sign.   The offi­cer asks for his license and tells Billy Joe to sit in his truck while he checks it out.

As the cop returns to call in the license, he hears a gun­shot and glass break­ing.  He then sees Billy Joe fall to the ground and the weapon fall on top of him.  He then advises the dis­patcher to send help; the sub­ject just shot himself.

That’s a syn­op­sis based on the inci­dent report filed by the offi­cer.   (Here’s the inci­dent report.)  All we know is a young man is dead.  The fam­ily wasn’t sat­is­fied with the inves­ti­ga­tion, so they call in the NAACP, and now — accord­ing to this story — they are “soothed”.  I’m not a con­sipiracy the­o­rist, so I’m not going to say the offi­cer shot the foot­ball player.  I’m going to say that he’s inno­cent until proven guilty.  It very well could be that Billy Joe had a loaded weapon in his vehi­cle and was try­ing to unload it when it dis­charged.  It could be that sim­ple.  But we won’t know until the inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­pleted and the autopsy report is com­pleted.  So all you local yokels out there — please don’t spec­u­late.  Let the author­i­ties do their jobs.  And a word of cau­tion to the NAACP — don’t turn this into a race issue.  Right now it has noth­ing to do with race, and the only way it could is if you make into one.

My prayers are with Billy Joe’s fam­ily, as well as the offi­cer and his fam­ily — no, every­one involved.  This is a sad sit­u­a­tion, and it’s a shame this young man is gone.  He had a promis­ing future.

More on this as I find out.

Filed Under: Local Tagged With: , ,