Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune
- When the mutilated and partially dismembered body of Brandon McClelland, a 24-year-old black man, turned up lying in the middle of a rural east Texas road one morning last month, the police immediately pronounced the case a hit-and-run by an unknown driver.
Within a few days, however, suspicions turned toward two white friends who had picked up McClelland in their truck a few hours before he was found dead early on Sept. 16. Despite signs that the truck had been washed, authorities discovered blood and other physical evidence on the undercarriage and arrested the two men, both with long criminal histories.
Now this small, racially divided town—already seared with a racist label by civil rights groups last year over differences in how blacks and whites were treated by the local justice system—is on edge yet again, wondering if it has a horrific new hate crime on its hands.
The district attorney insists that race had nothing to do with McClelland’s death, and police investigators are portraying the case as an apparent falling-out among friends.
