They’re Still Lynching in Louisiana?

These two young men are the friends of a 18 year African American man who was hanged in Pineville, Louisiana:

Police are running down every lead they get in connection with the death of a teen found hanging in a tree Sunday morning in Pineville. While Pineville Police officers haven’t classified the death as either a homicide or a suicide — it is an “open investigation” — the family is adamant that Marcus Phillips didn’t kill himself. “I am not going to let this go by as if he killed himself,” Phillips’ older sister, Victoria Phillips, said Monday. “He didn’t do this to himself.”

Marcus Phillips was found hanging from a tree in an empty lot on the corner of Sanders and Lee streets, Pineville Police Sgt. Darryl Basco said. A rope was around Phillips’ neck, and the rope was tied to a chain that has been hanging in that tree for years, neighbors said. The chain and rope both were removed sometime before Monday.

Jack Evans was the one who discovered the teen’s body. “I came out here at 7:30 to drink some coffee and smoke a cigarette and heard something in the grass so I turned around to look, and then I saw it,” he said, doing then exactly as he did that morning. “I stood up and wiped my eyes and looked again and said, ‘Oh, my God, there’s a black kid hanging in the tree. Somebody has killed him.’ So I called the police.” Evans said Phillips’ body was partially on the ground with his knees about six to eight inches from the ground and his arms hanging out in front of him. Both his mouth and his eyes were open.

“It sure does look suspicious to me,” Evans said. “All he had to do was stand up. That’s instinct.” Evans said that although he didn’t know Phillips, he had seen the teen often walking up and down the street, and said Phillips had always been pleasant. “I want some closure,” Evans said. “Something like this happening in our neighborhood, I want to know who and why. Every time I walk out here I see him hanging there. It is so sad. He was just a 17-year-old kid.” Evans said it doesn’t seem likely that Phillips or anyone else hanged him there to die. Instead, he suspects the teen was killed somewhere else and brought there.

This is some bullsh*t. That town is as small as a dime, so finding the culprits should not be that hard. SMH

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