I agree. My family drove through it every other week on their way form Beaumont to Quitman in the 60s to visit my grandmother. I've passed through it a dozen times since. There's not good reason for this garbage to be happening there. It's not that isolated, certainly not confined, and it shouldn't be economically depressed. Maybe the all space and variety of industry just allowed the races to live separately in isolation and ignore one another for too long, and now they hate.
Ken Bimbo Tillery, 44, of Pineland apparently stopped a vehicle in a rural area of Jasper County, looking for a ride home early Saturday morning.
The driver, Blake Little, 34, agreed on the condition that Tillery pay for gasoline when they arrived in Pineland, Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox said Sunday. Little and four others in the vehicle were from Jasper.
``They went by his house, but didn't drop him off because they were going by the gas station,'' Maddox said. ``They got to the gas station, and that's when Tillery tried to depart by running.''
One or more of the passengers chased down Tillery and a scuffle ensued. Maddox said Little then drove over Tillery, killing him.
Little was arrested Sunday on murder charges. The death remains under investigation.
In the same rural area of East Texas, James Byrd Jr. of Jasper died 3½ years ago when he was chained at his ankles behind a pickup truck and dragged for nearly three miles along a bumpy country road until he was dismembered and decapacitated.
Byrd was black and the men in the truck were white.
In this case, Maddox said the five men in the truck were black and Tillery was white.
``It's too early in the investigation to tell whether it was racially motivated, but it's still very much under investigation,'' Maddox said.
Investigators believe both drugs and alcohol were involved.
Pineland is about 130 miles northeast of Houston and about 20 miles north of Jasper.
Don't believe everything you read!