Update to this story.
Via Clarion-Ledger:
An arrest has been made in the beating of a West Point man, Police Chief Tim Brinkley said.
Ralph Weems, 32, was critically injured after an assault in a restaurant parking lot Saturday morning, police said.
Monday evening, they arrested 22-year-old Courtez McMillian of Okolona. He is being held in the Clay County Detention Center and will be charged with aggravated assault.
Brinkley said other arrests are also pending, and that most, if not all of the assailants appear to come from Monroe County. Detectives are reviewing video footage of the incident.
The Associated Press reports that Weems went to a Waffle House early Saturday. His friend David Knighten, an Air Force veteran of the Afghanistan war who was with him, told reporters that a man told him politely outside the restaurant that it wasn’t a safe place for whites, because people were upset by the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The police chief appears to be backing off his earlier statement that he isn’t investigating it as a “hate crime”, saying it is up to the prosecutor, which is a wiser position than he was taking earlier. Police of course should be investigating all alleged possibilities in a case, and not foreclosing any right off the bat, as he seemed to be doing.
Iraq war veteran Ralph Weems:
