A gay, black mayoral candidate killed last week in Mississippi was beaten, dragged and set on fire before his body was dumped near a river, according to his family.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued late on Sunday [3 Mar 2013], the family of Marco McMillian said a coroner who performed an autopsy on his body told them about the gruesome manner of death.<\/p>\n
“We feel this was not a random act of violence based on the condition of the body when it was found,” the McMillian family said. “Marco, nor anyone, should have their lives end in this manner.”<\/p>\n
Coahoma County Coroner Scotty Meredith declined to comment on the family’s statement that McMillian was beaten and burned.<\/p>\n
The body of McMillian, a 33-year-old candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, Mississippi, was found on Wednesday. A day later, law enforcement officials arrested a 22-year-old man, Lawrence Reed, who is also black, and charged him with murder in connection with the case.<\/p>\n
McMillian was one of the first viable openly gay candidates to run for office in Mississippi, according to the Victory Fund, a national organization that supports homosexual candidates.<\/p>\n
Autopsy results are not expected to be released until toxicology tests are complete, which could take two or three weeks, Meredith said.<\/p>\n
The Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department, which is leading the investigation, has released few details about the killing or a possible motive. Law enforcement officials say the killing is not being treated as a hate crime.<\/p>\n
McMillian had been missing since February 25 when his sport-utility vehicle was involved in a head-on collision in a rural part of Coahoma County in the Mississippi Delta. McMillian was not in the vehicle at the time of the accident.<\/p>\n
McMillian recently moved from Memphis back to his hometown of Clarksdale to run for mayor as a Democrat. He had faced state Representative Chuck Espy, a Democrat, and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Luckett, an attorney, along with two other candidates.<\/p>\n
McMillian’s campaign focused on reducing crime and unemployment in Clarksdale, a city of roughly 18,000 people, said campaign spokesman Jarod Keith.<\/p>\n
A once-booming agricultural community, the city has steadily bled residents and jobs over the years and now faces high levels of violence and unemployment.<\/p>\n
Another Democratic candidate for mayor, Doris Haynes Miller, said she recently was robbed at gunpoint in the town.<\/p>\n
(Editing by Kevin Gray and Andrew Hay)<\/i><\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2013, Reuters<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A gay, black mayoral candidate killed last week in Mississippi was beaten, dragged and set on fire before his body was dumped near a river, according to his family. In a statement issued late on Sunday [3 Mar 2013], the family of Marco McMillian said a coroner who performed an autopsy on his body told them about the gruesome manner of death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,139,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-justice","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}