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On Tuesday, July 26, 2022, Mississippi driver Mark Hall was arrested for threatening a group of young black boys on Ripley Street. In a video filmed by the assailant himself, he can be seen threatening to run over the children with his car while they were cycling in the neighborhood.
In the video, which was recorded from inside a car, the Mississippi driver can be seen following a group of black kids cycling on Cooper Street in Ripley. Once he notices the kids, he speeds up and almost hits one of them with his car. When the children swerve out of his way at the last minute, Hall can be heard saying:
"stupid n*****."
On Tuesday, Hall was charged with nine counts of simple assault and one count of attempted assault by physical menace to create fear.
"Mississippi racism is still alive": People condemn recent racial attacks on people of color in the state
49-year-old Mark Hall posted a ten-second-long video on his Snapchat account where he was seen calling the kids racial slurs and threatening to attack them with his vehicle. He believed the video would be removed a day later, following Snapchat's 24 hour policy. However, a friend recorded the video posted on Snapchat and made it available to the public on Facebook, where it went viral.
Ripley Police Chief Scott White stated that he believed that Hall's car made contact with one of the bikes. Hate crime charges are not completely off the table. According to online records, Hall is being held on $45,000 bond, though nothing has been said by authorities in this regard.
Following the news, netizens took to social media to express their shock and anger at the incident. One of them even pointed out how instances such as these indicated that racism was still quite prevalent in the state.
A parent of one of the children targeted by the Mississippi driver condemned the everyday racism that people of color face in America. He told WHBQ-TV:
"I shouldn't be worrying about if they should be worried about being run off the road. They should be worried about the next big game or worried about prom ... these are the things our kids should be worried about."
This is not the first time that the state has reported an incident of racism.
On July 20, Sam Dobbins, the chief of the Lexington Police Department in Mississippi, was fired for his alleged insensitive and racist remarks. Dobbins was recorded saying racist and homophobic slurs while in conversation with a black officer. While talking about a black man he had shot in the line of duty, he was heard proudly declaring:
""I shot that n***** 119 times."
Black communities in Mississippi have found themselves on the receiving end of racially motivated violence in the recent past. Mark Hall's alleged unprovoked attack on the children is a part of the threat that such communities continue to face.
