More than two years after Jimmie “Jay” Lee went missing, the remains of the University of Mississippi student and well-known member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community has been found.

On Wednesday, the Oxford Police Department released a statement to social media that the state Crime Lab confirmed the human skeletal remains found in Carroll County over the weekend belong to Lee.

“The Oxford Police Department made a commitment to finding Jay, no matter how long it took,” Chief Jeff McCutchen said in the release.

The confirmation comes after days of rumors flying around Grenada County, where Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the University of Mississippi graduate charged with Lee’s murder, is from.

An object found with Lee’s remains fueled the speculation: A gold necklace with his name on it, Mississippi Today reported on Monday. The nameplate matched jewelry that Lee wore in videos on his Instagram that were posted two days before his disappearance on July 8, 2022.

The Carroll County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release that deer hunters stumbled on Lee’s remains in a wooded gully on Saturday, Feb. 1. The Oxford police statement did not include additional information about who found the remains or how.

“While this part of the investigation is complete, additional work remains,” police stated. “However, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”

It remains to be seen how this discovery will impact the case against Herrington, who was charged with capital murder and taken to trial by the Lafayette County district attorney in December. One juror refused to convict due to the lack of a body, resulting in a mistrial.

Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore has said he intends to retry Herrington. He could not be reached by press time.

In Oxford, Lee’s disappearance sparked a movement organized by Lee’s college friends called Justice for Jay Lee. On Wednesday, an Instagram account for the group posted a video of Lee dancing, his arm in the air, his long, blonde weave and sparkly silver skirt shimmering to club music.

The discovery brings members of Lee’s family one step closer to closure, said Tayla Carey, Lee’s sister.

“Speaking for myself, I can say it does bring me some type of happiness knowing he’s not out there alone anymore,” she said.

The next step is to celebrate Lee’s life by giving him the memorial he deserves, but Carey said she won’t feel closure until justice occurs with a new trial.

“It’s been a long two and a half years,” Carey said. “A very long, long, long two and a half years.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

After the Legislature failed to give the state health department the funding it needed to fully staff county health departments, some no longer offer clinical services and the agency may close others. 

County health departments now offer one of three levels of care as a part of a plan to ensure their sustainability in the face of limited and unpredictable funding. 

Eight county health departments no longer offer the clinical services they have traditionally provided, like immunizations, preventive screening and reproductive health services. Instead, they serve as a connection point to other health departments with higher levels of care. 

The reorganization is the county health departments’ “pathway for survival,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told Mississippi Today. 

Previously, clinicians rotated between county health departments, he said. The new system establishes consistent levels of care.

“That didn’t work,” he said. “But this is working.”

Health departments are now classified into three levels:

• Level 3 clinics, or “super clinics,” have a doctor or nurse practitioner on staff. They offer a full range of services, including family planning, immunizations, disease screenings and programming for mothers and children.
• Level 2 clinics have a nurse on staff and offer limited family planning services, immunization, disease screenings, programming for mothers and children and telehealth appointments. 
• Level 1 clinics do not have a clinician on staff, and offer referrals, record services, federal programming for women and children and help people schedule rides to higher level clinics.

Some clinics offer Level 2 services on some days of the week and Level 3 services on others.

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The new system aims to concentrate resources and ensure that every region of Mississippi has access to needed health services, said Dr. Renia Dotson, Mississippi’s state epidemiologist and the director of the recently created Center for Public Health Transformation, the health department division responsible for overseeing the changes. 

It utilizes telehealth and transportation services – like the department’s partnership with Uber – to ensure that patients can access a doctor or nurse practitioner even in health department locations without one on staff. 

In just over one year, the health department doubled the number of nurse practitioners it employs to over 30 and increased the number of Level 3 clinics to 15, said Dotson. She said the health department aims to continue expanding the number of Level 3 clinics. 

Drastic budget cuts in 2017 forced the agency to shutter county health departments and lay off staff. The agency has spent the last eight years rebounding from the cuts. 

In 2023, the Legislature denied the health department’s $9 million budget request to hire the nurses needed to fully staff county health departments and a program that puts nurses in the homes of low-income pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies. 

The Mississippi State Department of Health began implementing a tiered approach to county health departments’ level of care not long afterwards. The agency has been making the changes for the past 18 months, said Edney. 

No county health departments have yet been closed as a result of the changes, said Dotson, but there may be some areas where it is not possible to continue operating a county health department. The agency is currently in the process of evaluating the level of care that is needed and that the department is able to support in each county, and considering other health services offered in an area when making determinations on need. 

“We’ll make an effort to maintain a presence in every county if that is feasible,” she said. 

The agency’s website does not currently include information about the reorganization or provide information about which level of care each county health department provides. 

The Department of Health made a meager budget request this year of just $4.8 million to train early-career doctors and help Mississippians enroll in health insurance. It did not include any specific requests for county health department funding or funding positions for doctors or nurses. 

The agency is working to create margins in a tight budget by reducing its overhead, Edney told Mississippi Today. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Feb. 5, 1994

A jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers after seeing evidence that included Beckwith’s fingerprint on the murder weapon and hearing six witnesses share how he had bragged about killing Evers. The judge sentenced Beckwith to life in prison. 

Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, had prayed for this day, and now that it had come, she could hardly believe it. “All I want to say is, ‘Yay, Medgar, yay!’” 

She wiped away tears. “My God, I don’t have to say accused assassin anymore. I can say convicted assassin, who laughed and said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? That’s one n—– who isn’t going to come back.’ But what he failed to realize was that Medgar was still alive in spirit and through each and every one of us who wanted to see justice done.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.