Mississippi Today
JPD officer stun gun leaves ‘Superman’ who saved neighbor’s children permanently disabled
Longtime law enforcement officer Darryl Norwood was trying to help Jackson police catch a man threatening to kill his family when an officer shot Norwood, instead of the man, with a stun gun.
That night would be the last that Norwood would walk without a cane.
Rather than admit what happened, authorities blamed his injuries on a gunshot or physical altercation, according to medical and police records. Norwood has filed a lawsuit against the Jackson Police Department and Cpl. Rebecca Lomax for acting “with gross negligence” when using her stun gun to strike Norwood.
It was after 10 p.m., on Nov. 1, 2022, when the doorbell rang inside the home of Norwood, who was sitting in the living room with his 23-year-old daughter, Jaylen. They checked their security cameras to see who it was, but they saw no one at the front door.
Because it was the night after Halloween, Jaylen assumed some kids were still out trick-or-treating. But after hearing movement in the backyard, Norwood stepped outside, identified himself as a police officer, and asked whoever it was to show themselves. When they didn’t, he told his daughter to call 911.
After opening the front door and stepping outside, he recognized four children from down the street. He said the children, who were crying, told him that their father, Clifton Sutton, was going to kill them and their mother.
Norwood said he grabbed his police badge, handcuffs and gun before going to find Sutton.
Norwood said he found Sutton in his front yard, hollering, screaming and flailing about. He said it was clear to him that Sutton was high.
When Sutton spotted his children at Norwood’s house, he started running toward them. As he got closer, Norwood shouted at him multiple times to stop, but he didn’t.
After hearing the commotion, people emerged from their homes. Two of them said Sutton threw himself into a moving car and fell to the ground, only to get right back up, as he tried to make his way to Norwood’s house.
Norwood said Sutton then walked to a neighbor’s house and sat on the ground. A neighbor said he and Norwood tried to keep Sutton calm and away from his family while they waited for the police. Four minutes later, Jackson police arrived, according to police records.
Video footage obtained by Mississippi Today shows Norwood walking up to an officer’s patrol car and talking to the officer through the window. At the same time, Sutton sat on the hood of another officer’s car, surrounded by the first officer to arrive at the scene and two other men.
Norwood said he was trying to explain to Cpl. Rebecca Lomax that he had things under control when Sutton suddenly walked away.
Norwood began to chase him. Norwood said he worried what Sutton might do to his family and took it upon himself to restrain Sutton since the police weren’t doing that.
Norwood grabbed one of Sutton’s hands and began to pin him up against another police car, aided by a Jackson officer. Norwood said he was hoping to handcuff Sutton — the last thing he remembered before waking up in a hospital.
The video shows what appears to be a female officer shining a light from her stun gun as she moves toward the three men. The crackle of the stun gun can be heard as she fires it.
When a stun gun strikes, it sends 50,000 volts through a person’s body, immobilizing that person and making it impossible for them to brace their fall with their hands or arms, according to experts.
After seeing Norwood strike the asphalt, Jaylen began screaming and rushed to his side.
She said she saw him splayed out on the street, unconscious in a pool of blood. According to Norwood’s ex-wife, Charlotte, Lomax administered chest compressions and shouted, “Lou, Lou, get up, Lou,” while Norwood lay unconscious.
According to police records, an ambulance arrived at 11:38 p.m. to take Norwood to the University of Mississippi Medical Center. One officer told the dispatcher that a “male [was] shot in the head.
Hospital records say that a female Jackson police officer, presumably Lomax, told doctors, “there may not have been a gunshot, but there was definitely an altercation … and this patient’s head was being beat up on the ground.”
When Norwood woke up in the hospital, he discovered that doctors had intubated him. He spent the next three months in and out of the hospital.
Before the incident, Norwood said he lived an active life. He spent his free time woodworking, weightlifting and mountain biking. Now he uses a cane to get around and battles constant pain due to nerve damage.
His “cognitive function has been adversely affected, and he is now suffering from memory loss, anxiety attacks, depression, numbness on the left side of his body, and uncontrollable emotions,” according to the lawsuit filed in Hinds County Circuit Court.
Norwood attended physical therapy sessions until Medicaid stopped covering his treatment in January of 2023.
His ex-wife came to live with him and take care of him after the incident. He said he also has two support Yorkiepoos, Prince and Giselle. “When I start crying, both will come in my lap and lick my tears,” he said. “They know when I’m hurting.”
Norwood lived in Jackson all his life. In his youth, he had a few run-ins with the police. One time, officers dragged him out of his car and aimed a shotgun at his head. “I thought I was dead,” he said. Officers then released him after they realized he wasn’t the one they were looking for, he said.
Norwood became an officer because he wanted to make a difference. And he believes he did by teaching his officers how to treat people with respect on the job.
“You had to have accountability for your officers. If you did something wrong, you let me know what it is. I’m gonna get that monkey off your back as best I can,” he said. “I will die for you…, but I will not lie for you.”
According to Norwood, the officers he’s trained have gone on to become sergeants and lieutenants elsewhere and have reached out to him to thank him for his mentorship. Their praise keeps him going, he said.
The lawsuit accuses Lomax of “reckless disregard” for firing on Norwood, “who was committing no crime.”
The city attorney’s office responded that even if Lomax fired a stun gun during a lawful arrest, the evidence fails to “satisfy the high burden required for reckless disregard” and, therefore, both Lomax and the city are entitled to immunity.
The lawsuit claims that the city failed to properly train officers on the use of stun guns and “created and maintained a culture, pattern and practice of ignoring [a] person’s safety and welfare in the Jackson Police Department and violating [a] person’s constitutional rights.”
After the case was transferred to federal court, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III dismissed all the constitutional claims, saying Norwood had failed to prove a culture or a pattern of stun gun misuse. “A plaintiff must do more than describe the incident that gave rise to his injury,” he wrote.
Jordan dismissed the claim against Lomax, concluding that Norwood had failed to overcome “Lomax’s qualified-immunity defense.”
Jordan remanded the lawsuit back to Hinds County Circuit Court, where it is still pending.
Norwood said when he contacted the Jackson Police Department to obtain a record of what happened, they told him they didn’t have it.
Mississippi Today tried to obtain the incident report, use of force report, and body cam and dash cam footage related to the incident. The Jackson Police Department claims the records are part of an open investigation and denied our request for them.
Norwood served as an officer and lieutenant for the University of Mississippi Medical Center Police for over a decade before taking medical retirement in 2019 after he sustained an injury to his back. He said if the department had followed protocol, there should be an incident report and a separate use of force report on the firing of Lomax’s stun gun.
Norwood also tried to contact Lomax, whom he trained at UMMC, but was unable to reach her.
This is not the first time Lomax has injured someone on the job. In 2011, two years after becoming an officer with the Columbus Police Department, she was suspended for 30 days without pay for causing a collision that sent her and three elderly women to the hospital.
Mississippi Today reached out to Lomax. She referred all questions to the city attorney’s office, which wouldn’t comment and pointed to court filings.
The kids Norwood helped that night brought him a fruit basket and a thank you card addressed to “Superman.” Sutton sent Norwood a handwritten apology.
“I believe God doesn’t make mistakes, only lessons to learn from,” Sutton wrote. “I’m very sorry for the pain I have caused you and your family.”
In a postscript, he said that he’d recently found God and was trying to be a better husband and father. That night, he asked his wife and kids to pray with him.
“A spirit came over me and took control,” he wrote. “I don’t remember anything that happened.”
Sutton said when he woke up in the hospital, a police officer told him he’d assaulted Norwood. Norwood denies that Sutton assaulted him.
Norwood doesn’t regret his intervention. “I thank God that I went out there and helped the kids and the wife; I do, but sometimes it hurts,” he said. “I’m just hoping that somebody will help me, and this won’t happen to nobody else.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Central, south Mississippi voters will decide judicial runoffs on Tuesday
Some Mississippi voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide who should represent them on the state’s highest courts.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Absentee voting has begun, and in-person absentee voting at county circuit clerk’s offices ends at noon on Saturday.
In the Jackson Metro area and parts of central Mississippi, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens will compete against Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County. In areas on the Gulf Coast, Jennifer Schloegel and Amy St. Pé will face each other for an open seat on the Court of Appeals.
Candidates for judicial offices in Mississippi are technically nonpartisan, but political parties and trade associations often contribute money to candidates and cut ads for them, which has increasingly made them almost as partisan as other campaigns.
In the Central District Supreme Court race, GOP forces are working to oust Kitchens, one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high Court. Conservative leaders also realize Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.
Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy.
Kitchens, first elected to the court in 2008, is a former district attorney and private-practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases.
In an interview on Mississippi Today’s ‘The Other Side’ podcast, Kitchens said his opponent, who primarily practices real estate law, would be at a “significant disadvantage” because the state Supreme Court often reviews criminal cases and major civil lawsuits that are sent to them on appeal.
“I’m sure she has an academic knowledge about the circuit courts that she perhaps learned in law school or perhaps has been to some seminars, but she does not have the hands-on trial experience that I have,” Kitchens said. “And that’s so important to the work that I do.”
Branning, a private-practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate leadership, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.
While campaigning for the judicial seat, she has pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she has stopped short of endorsing policy positions — which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing.
Branning declined an invitation to appear on Mississippi Today’s podcast.
“Mississippians need and deserve Supreme Court justices that are constitutionally conservative in nature,” Branning said in a recent interview with radio station SuperTalk Mississippi. “And by that, I mean justices that simply follow the law. They do not add or take away.”
The two candidates have collectively raised around $187,00 and spent $182,00 during the final stretch of the campaign, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office.
Since she initially qualified in January, Branning has raised the most amount of money at $879,871, with $250,000 of that money coming from a loan she gave her campaign. She spent around $730,000 of that money. Several third party groups have supported her campaign.
Kitchens has raised around $514,00 since he qualified for reelection. He’s spent roughly $436,000 of that money, and some of his top contributors have been trial attorneys.
For the open Court of Appeals seat, Schloegel and St Pe, two influential names on the Gulf Coast, are working to turn out their voters in a close election.
Schloegel is a Chancery Court judge in Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties. St. Pé is an attorney in private practice, a municipal court judge in Gautier, and a city attorney for Moss Point.
Schloegel has raised roughly $214,000 since she qualified, and has spent almost that same amount of money this election cycle. St. Pé has raised around $480,000 this year and spent approximately $438,067 during that timeframe.
Whoever wins the race, it ensures that a woman will fill the open seat. After the election, half of the judges on the 10-member appellate court will be women, the most number of women who have served on the court at one time.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
Nov. 22, 1961
Five Black students, made up of NAACP Youth Council members and two SNCC volunteers from Albany State College, were arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Trailways station in Albany, Georgia.
The council members bonded out of jail, but the SNCC volunteers, Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall declined bail and “chose to remain in jail over the holidays to dramatize their demand for justice,” according to SNCC Digital Gateway. The president of Albany State College expelled them.
Gober became one of SNCC’s Freedom Singers and wrote the song, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” after the 1961 killing of Herbert Lee in Mississippi. The tune became SNCC’s anthem.
After her release from jail, Gober joined other students, and police arrested her and other demonstrators. Back in the same jail, she sang to the police chief and mayor to open the cells, “I hear God’s children praying in jail, ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom.’”
Albany State suspended another student, Bernice Reagon, after she joined SNCC. She poured herself into the civil rights movement and later formed the Grammy-nominated a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock to educate and empower the audience and community.
“When I opened my mouth and began to sing, there was a force and power within myself I had never heard before,” a power she said she did not know she had.
Other members of the Freedom Singers included Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson, Dorothy Vallis, Rutha Harris, Bernard Lafayette and Charles Neblett. On the third anniversary of the sit-in movement in 1963, they performed at Carnegie Hall.
“This is a singing movement,” SNCC leader James Forman told a reporter. “The songs help. Without them, it would be ugly.”
Today, the Albany Civil Rights Institute houses exhibits on these protesters, Martin Luther King Jr. and others who joined the Albany Movement.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
IHL deletes the word ‘diversity’ from its policies
The governing board of Mississippi’s public universities voted Thursday to delete the word “diversity” from several policies, including a requirement that the board evaluate university presidents on campus diversity outcomes.
Though the Legislature has not passed a bill targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the changes “in order to ensure continued compliance with state and federal law,” according to the board book.
The move comes on the heels of the re-election of former President Donald Trump and after several universities in Mississippi have renamed their diversity offices. Earlier this year, the IHL board approved changes to the University of Southern Mississippi’s mission and vision statements that removed the words “diverse” and “inclusiveness.”
In an email, John Sewell, IHL’s communications director, did not respond to several questions about the policy changes but wrote that the board’s goal was to “reinforce our commitment to ensuring students have access to the best education possible, supported by world-class faculty and staff.”
“The end goal is to support all students, and to make sure they graduate fully prepared to enter the workforce, hopefully in Mississippi,” Sewell added.
On Thursday, trustees approved the changes without discussion after a first reading by Harold Pizzetta, the associate commissioner for legal affairs and risk management. But Sewell wrote in an email that the board discussed the policy amendments in open session two months ago during its retreat in Meridian, more than an hour away from the board’s normal meeting location in Jackson.
IHL often uses these retreats, which unlike its regular board meetings aren’t livestreamed and are rarely attended by members of the public outside of the occasional reporter, to discuss potentially controversial policy changes.
Last year, the board had a spirited discussion about a policy change that would have increased its oversight of off-campus programs during its retreat at the White House Hotel in Biloxi. In 2022, during a retreat that also took place in Meridian, trustees discussed changing the board’s tenure policies. At both retreats, a Mississippi Today reporter was the only member of the public to witness the discussions.
The changes to IHL’s diversity policy echo a shift, particularly at colleges and universities in conservative states, from concepts like diversity in favor of “access” and “opportunity.” In higher education, the term “diversity, equity and inclusion” has traditionally referred to a range of efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among minority populations.
But in recent years, conservative politicians have contended that DEI programs are wasteful spending and racist. A bill to ban state funding for DEI in Mississippi died earlier this year, but at least 10 other states have passed laws seeking to end or restrict such initiatives at state agencies, including publicly funded universities, according to ABC News.
In Mississippi, the word “diversity” first appeared in IHL’s policies in 1998. The diversity statement was adopted in 2005 and amended in 2013.
The board’s vote on Thursday turned the diversity statement, which was deleted in its entirety, into a “statement on higher education access and success” according to the board book.
“One of the strengths of Mississippi is the diversity of its people,” the diversity statement read. “This diversity enriches higher education and contributes to the capacity that our students develop for living in a multicultural and interdependent world.”
Significantly, the diversity statement required the IHL board to evaluate the university presidents and the higher learning commissioner on diversity outcomes.
The statement also included system-wide goals — some of which it is unclear if the board has achieved — to increase the enrollment and graduation rates of minority students, employ more underrepresented faculty, staff and administrators, and increase the use of minority-owned contractors and vendors.
Sewell did not respond to questions about if IHL has met those goals or if the board will continue to evaluate presidents on diversity outcomes.
In the new policy, those requirements were replaced with two paragraphs about the importance of respectful dialogue on campus and access to higher education for all Mississippians.
“We encourage all members of the academic community to engage in respectful, meaningful discourse with the aim of promoting critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, a deeper understanding of the human condition, and the development of character,” the new policy reads. “All students should be supported in their educational journey through programming and services designed to have a positive effect on their individual academic performance, retention, and graduation.”
Also excised was a policy that listed common characteristics of universities in Mississippi, including “a commitment to ethnic and gender diversity,” among others. Another policy on institutional scholarships was also edited to remove a clause that required such programs to “promote diversity.”
“IHL is committed to higher education access and success among all populations to assist the state of Mississippi in meeting its enrollment and degree completion goals, as well as building a highly-skilled workforce,” the institutional scholarship policy now reads.
The board also approved a change that requires the universities to review their institutional mission statements on an annual basis.
A policy on “planning principles” will continue to include the word “diverse,” and a policy that states the presidential search advisory committees will “be representative in terms of diversity” was left unchanged.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
Local News6 days ago
Celebrate the holidays in Ocean Springs with free, festive activities for the family
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed7 days ago
'Hunting for females' | First day of trial in Laken Riley murder reveals evidence not seen yet
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed7 days ago
First woman installed as commanding officer of NAS Pensacola
-
Kaiser Health News4 days ago
A Closely Watched Trial Over Idaho’s Near-Total Abortion Ban Continues Tuesday
-
Mississippi Today6 days ago
On this day in 1972
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed3 days ago
Trial underway for Sheila Agee, the mother accused in deadly Home Depot shooting
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed2 days ago
Jose Ibarra found guilty in murder of Laken Riley | FOX 5 News
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed3 days ago
Alabama's weather forecast is getting colder, and a widespread frost and freeze is likely by the …