TEEN WITH NOOSE DANGLING FROM PICKUP
ARRESTED IN LA.
02:28 PM CDT on Friday, September 21, 2007
Associated Press
ALEXANDRIA, La.
– A teenager was arrested Thursday when police allegedly found hangman's nooses dangling from the rear of his pickup
truck after he drove past a crowd of people who had attended a civil rights march earlier in the day.
The incident took place only hours after tens of thousands of civil
rights marchers demonstrated in Jena, about an hour's drive from Alexandria,
on behalf of six teens charged with beating a white schoolmate at Jena
High School.
Jeremiah Munsen, 18, of Colfax, La., and a 16-year-old passenger in his truck were arrested
Thursday night near a bus station where a group of people who had marched in Jena were waiting for buses to take them home.
Munsen, who is white, was booked on charges of inciting a riot, driving while intoxicated
and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. A city attorney will decide whether charges against the 16-year-old boy
from Dry Prong, La., are warranted, said Alexandria Police
Sgt. Clifford Gatlin.
"I wish we had a charge in Louisiana
for aggravated ignorance, because this is a classic case," Gatlin said.
Gatlin said the crowd of about 200 people at the bus station remained calm throughout the
episode.
"They were just offended and appalled that somebody would be that stupid to do that," Gatlin
added.
The 16-year-old, who was being held in a juvenile detention facility Friday, told police he
had a "KKK" tattoo on his chest and said some of his relatives were involved in the Ku Klux Klan, according to a police report.
Officers found an unloaded rifle and a set of brass knuckles in Munsen's truck, police said.
Nooses figured into the controversy that drew tens of thousands of people to Jena on Thursday.
Last year, a black Jena High School student asked whether blacks could sit under a shade tree that was a frequent
gathering place for whites. He was told yes, but nooses appeared in the tree the next day. Three white students were suspended
but not criminally prosecuted.