STONEWALL, Miss. (AP) – It’s a tiny little memorial in the yard of an aging mobile home in a down-on-its-luck Mississippi mill town. Poster boards with votive candles form hearts, there are silk flowers and red, white and blue balloons. There’s a sign demanding “Justice 4 Jonathan.”
Here on Artesia Avenue is where Jonathan Sanders died after 10 p.m. on July 8, following a physical encounter with a white police officer for the town of Stonewall. What happened that night when Sanders – a 39-year-old black man riding in a two-wheel buggy pulled by a horse – crossed paths with Kevin Herrington – a 25-year-old part-time officer – is intensely disputed.
Lawyers for the Sanders family and witnesses who live in the mobile home say Herrington engaged in an unprovoked attack on Sanders after the two saw each other at a convenience store about a mile across town. C.J. Lawrence, the lawyer for three witnesses, said Sanders was doing nothing illegal and didn’t resist while Herrington choked him to death.
A lawyer for Herrington, though, said the officer found Sanders with what appeared to be illegal drugs. Sanders and Herrington struggled in the grass and Sanders grabbed Herrington’s gun from his holster, only to drop it in the grass, attorney Bill Ready Jr. said.
Trying to sort out the facts are the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. Herrington is on unpaid leave and left town on a family trip, Ready said. Sanders’ survivors – including a mother, sister and two children – buried him Saturday.