By John Howell Sr.
Collateral damage from last Friday’s shootout following the North Panola/Rosa Fort football game included this week’s opponent’s refusal to travel to the Sardis high school for tonight’s game. Instead, NP head football coach arranged to play the game at Byhalia, with North Panola receiving the gate proceeds that it would normally have collected at a home game.

“Football games are supposed to be fun,” District Attorney John Champion said during a Monday press conference, “where you can pull for your team, where you can go enjoy watching young people, who are interested in doing the right thing, play sports.

“When you have a group of kids that decide they want to bring firearms to a situation like this, we’re going to take notice and we’re going to do something about it,” Champion continued. “I’m sick of it. There are too many young people right now dying in this community.”

A 15-year-old was killed and two people were injured in the Friday night gunfire near the school. Another man was struck by gunfire at a Sardis club and another was arrested brandishing a firearm near Green Hill School. The incidents all occurred in little over an hour, and authorities early in the week were trying to determine whether the events were connected.

Three men have been arrested and charged with capital murder, two with aggravated assault and two with possession of a firearm on educational property.

“The sheriff (Panola County Sheriff Dennis Darby) and I have talked; Bob King with the superintendent’s office with North Panola Schools is here; we’re all taking this very, very seriously,” Champion said.

“Something needs to be done more than we’re doing now,” the district attorney continued. “We’re certainly going to enlist every law enforcement agency, my office, we’re going to enlist the federal government … to come in and be a heavy, heavy police presence in this county.”
Sheriff Darby said that arrests have been made of upper echelon gang members in Panola and surrounding counties, pushing leadership into younger ranks.

Champion said that gang activity in Panola County is influenced by gang members from Clarksdale, Greenwood and Greenville.