Mississippi Today
Belzoni to Rolling Fork to Greenville: One mom’s mission to get her son medical help after the tornadoes

Belzoni to Rolling Fork to Greenville: One mom's mission to get her son medical help after the tornadoes
Tameka Myles was at work Friday evening when she got the call every mother dreads.
“You need to get here,” her neighbor in Rolling Fork said. “Jay is hurt pretty bad.”
Immediately, Myles got in her Nissan Maxima with a coworker and raced home, with one thing on her mind: her son.
Myles knew the weather was bad that night, but she assumed it would pass, as usual. She figured her 10-year-old son Gregory “Jay” Brady Jr. would be safe at her cousin's house while she was at work at the Bumpers in Belzoni about an hour away.
Instead, her hometown was decimated.
An EF-4 tornado ripped through the Mississippi Delta on Friday night. At least 25 people died, and dozens more were injured. Gov. Tate Reeves issued a state of emergency Saturday morning.
“My city – my city is gone,” Rolling Fork Mayor Eldridge Walker told CNN Saturday morning. “But we are resilient and we are going to come back strong.”
That night, Myles drove down pitch black roads and through downed power lines, one hand permanently pressed down on her car horn. She couldn't fathom the devastation around her in the place she had grown up.
On the way there, Myles got a call from another neighbor who had picked up her son and taken him to the Rolling Fork Motel.
“It was the only place that she could get to, because they had everything blocked off,” Myles said.
Myles arrived at the motel to see her son sprawled out on a bed, bleeding from his side.
“I knew that I couldn't break down,” she said. “I had to get my baby some help.”
The neighbor had already tried to get her son admitted at the local hospital, Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital – the only hospital in the county. But it was full, and later lost power and had to transfer its patients to other hospitals.
The rural hospital has been struggling to stay afloat and was, as of September, seeking a buyer. It has continued to lose money over the years, even after pooling its resources with other small hospitals to buy supplies at a discounted rate.
EMTs said they'd return for Jay after taking someone already in the ambulance to Greenville, but the neighbor, a certified nurse assistant, knew the boy couldn't wait.
When Myles heard her son couldn't get emergency medical help, she was dumbfounded.
Malary White, chief communications officer at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said emergency responders were en route to assist survivors within minutes after the storm and ambulances were dispatched from across the state to Sharkey County.
But she conceded that medical resources were stretched.
“Let's keep in mind we were dealing with a mass casualty situation,” she said.
“Can they do that?” Myles kept asking. Myles couldn't understand why her son couldn't get help. But one thing was clear — she had to take matters into her own hands.
Myles and her coworker picked up Jay and loaded him into her car, before calling Jay's father. They met up with him, transferred Jay to his car in the backseat because it was larger, and they sped the 41 miles toward Greenville, the closest place Myles knew Jay would be able to receive medical attention.
On the way there, Jay's father kept calling Myles, telling her that Jay was complaining he couldn't breathe. Myles started crying. Her coworker begged Myles to let him drive, but she refused.
“We're not stopping,” she said. “We've got to get to Greenville.”
As they rolled into Greenville at 10 p.m., Myles blew past five red stop lights. Her coworker hung his head out of the window, yelling at bystanders to get out of the way. When Myles spotted the Delta Regional Medical Center, all she could think was, “Thank God we made it.”
Twenty minutes later, Myles discovered that Jay had four fractured ribs, and one of his lungs was punctured.
Someone with a punctured lung runs the risk of fatal complications like cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, shock and death if not treated quickly.
He'd need to be put on oxygen and transferred to a larger hospital —nurses at Delta Health told Myles that the hospital didn't have the equipment to help Jay.
Saturday morning, Jay was taken by helicopter to Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis. Myles joined him at noon.
That night, Myles pulled the recliner close to Jay's hospital bed. She put two of her braids in his hand before he fell asleep, and told him to yank if he needed help. Then she slept for the first time in more than 24 hours.
Jay has since been taken off oxygen and is breathing on his own. He's still got tubes in his side, but he's talking more and smiling, and Myles is relieved.
But she's haunted by the possibilities of what might have happened if she didn't have a car. She wonders how quickly they'd be able to get help if they didn't live in rural Mississippi.
“My options were limited. I knew I had to do it myself,” Myles said. “I don't really want to think about me not being able to help my son.”
She still has no idea how her son was injured. All Myles can find out about her cousin, who Jay was with during the tornado, is that he's in critical condition at a hospital in Jackson.
It's not clear when Jay will be discharged. Multiple times a day, he asks when they can go home. Myles hasn't told him yet that their home doesn't exist anymore. Their trailer and everything in it was destroyed.
And now, after her son couldn't get the help he needed, Myles isn't so sure that she wants to return home. Things are only set to get worse: One report puts a third of Mississippi's rural hospitals at risk of closure, making it even harder to access health care.
“I think what I'm going to do is we're going to move to a bigger area, where we've got support,” Myles said. “Where we can get help.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Judge puts Democratic candidate back on gubernatorial ballot

A Hinds County Circuit Court judge has ruled the state Democratic Party improperly disqualified Bob Hickingbottom from this year's gubernatorial primary ballot.
The state party is appealing the decision to the state Supreme Court.
Judge Forest Johnson Jr. ruled that Hickingbottom meets qualifications to run for Mississippi governor — being at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for 20 years or more and a resident of the state for at least five years. The judge ruled that, while it is undisputed that Hickingbottom has failed to file a statement of economic interest with the Ethics Commission as required by law since he ran for governor in 2019 as a Constitution Party candidate, he should still be on the ballot.
The ruling said there is a difference between violating the law requiring a candidate to file an ethics report and qualifications to run for governor and, “Qualifications are core … Either you are or you're not.” The court noted that if elected, Hickingbottom could face misdemeanor penalties for failing to file the report, including being barred from being sworn into office or receiving a salary.
READ MORE: What is Bob Hickingbottom up to?
The judge also ruled that while Hickingbottom appeared to wait too late to file an appeal of his disqualification by the party, his right to run for office and the right of people to vote for him “prevails over his delay in seeking relief from this court.”
“We are a constitutional democracy in this nation,” Johnson wrote. “Voting is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. The right of citizens to run for elected office, while not yet recognized on the same level as voting itself, is at least a quasi fundamental pillar of our democracy.”
The state Democratic Party Executive Committee in February ruled that Hickingbottom and another little-known candidate, Gregory Wash, had not met eligibility requirements to run for governor, with both failing to file statements of economic interest with the Ethics Commission. This left Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley as the lone candidate on the Aug. 8 primary ballot. Wash, who ran for governor as a Democrat four years ago, did not appeal the decision in court.
Presley is considered the frontrunner in the Democratic Primary and is expected to face incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who faces two little-known candidates in his primary, in the Nov. 7 general election.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1980

MAY 29, 1980

Vernon Jordan, who once worked alongside Medgar Evers as a field secretary for the NAACP and later advised Bill Clinton, survived an assassination attempt in Fort Wayne, Indiana, by racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin (and so did Hustler publisher Larry Flynt).
Franklin was acquitted of the assault — only to confess his guilt years later. In an interview, Franklin said he considered Adolf Hitler his hero and “Mein Kampf” his Bible. “I read it hundreds of times.”
Trying to start a “race war,” he said he bombed synagogues, shot interracial couples and killed “enemies of the white race.” By the time it ended, he had killed at least 22 people, including Jackson State University student Johnnie Noyes Jr., who had simply been washing his car.
In 2013, Franklin was executed in Missouri for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon outside a synagogue in St. Louis.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
FAQ: The 2023 lieutenant governor’s race

Mississippi Today's Adam Ganucheau, Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance break down frequently asked questions about the 2023 lieutenant governor's race. The Republican primary features incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and state Sen. Chris McDaniel.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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