A decade of storylines in the Golden Triangle ran the gamut from good to bad and, sometimes, controversial.
Some industry boomed, while others fizzled. Changed leadership at multiple government agencies look to shape the years to come.
Education played its part in guiding the decade’s news, with millions in building projects at Lowndes County School District, the merger of Starkville and Oktibbeha County schools and the completion of the long-awaited $42 million Communiversity for workforce training.
A defendant in an infamous officer-involved fatal shooting in Columbus still awaits trial, as do suspects in decades-old cold case murders in the area that technology helped finally apprehend.
Here are some of the top stories from the past decade in the Golden Triangle:
Further industrial development comes to Golden Triangle
In economic development, the decade saw continued growth that included a change of ownership and expansion at one major industry, the creation of another megasite in Lowndes County, the arrival of another major industry in West Point, a new industrial park site finally overcoming legal barriers in Starkville that is now ready for tenants, the failure and collapse of another industry and finally, the christening of a new workforce education center expected to equip the next generations of skilled workers.
In 2013, state and local officials closed a deal that brought Japanese tire manufacturer Yokohama to West Point, providing $130 million in incentives for the four-phase project that was expected to bring 500 workers in each phase. Operations in the first phase at the plant began in 2015, but subsequent phases have yet to be finished as employment and production numbers have fallen well short of projections.
Severstal, the Russian-owned steel mill which opened in 2007, was sold to Indiana-based Steel Dynamics Inc., in 2014 for $1.62 billion, and the new owner wasted no time in expanding operations there, including two major expansions that totaled $340 million that will greatly increase and diversify its products. The second phase is near completion.
In 2016, the Golden Triangle Development LINK unveiled plans for the 1,144-acre Infinity Megasite, Lowndes County’s third such industrial site, located at the Golden Triangle Industrial Aerospace Park on Highway 82 west of the Golden Triangle Regional Airport. As of yet, no industries have located at the newest site.
With the successes came one notable failure. KiOR, a company located at The Island, ceased operations in 2014, just three years after opening. The plant, which converted wood debris into oil, ultimately filed bankruptcy, leaving the state to fight it out with creditors for $69 million of a $75 million loan to the company.
In Starkville, plans for a new development site called North Star were delayed for almost three years as neighboring property owners fought the project in court. Finally, in November, the state’s Supreme Court declined to hear the complaint, ending the lawsuit and clearing the way for development of the near 400-acre parcel located near the intersection of Highways 389 and 82.
With the arrival of new industry, the demand for skilled workers quickly emerged as an issue that needed attention. To address that, local, state and federal funds totaling $42 million were committed to build a state-of-the-art workforce education center. Four years in the making, the Communiversity opened in November as part of East Mississippi Community College’s workforce development program.
Officer indicted for shooting Ricky Ball
In arguably the most notorious, and controversial, shooting of the decade in the Golden Triangle, a former Columbus police officer still awaits trial for a manslaughter charge.
Canyon Boykin fatally shot 26-year-old Ricky Ball on Oct. 16, 2015, after Ball ran from a traffic stop initiated at 21st Street and 15th Avenue North. Ball, who was shot twice, was a passenger in the vehicle stopped.
Neither Boykin nor the other two officers in the patrol vehicle making the stop initiated their body cameras at any point during the incident. A 9 mm handgun found by Ball’s body was identified as one reported stolen from the home Garrett Mittan, a CPD officer who arrived at the scene after the shooting.
Public outcry followed, including marches from groups seeking justice as well as a city-led public forum at Hunt Gymnasium. Amid the investigation, then CPD chief Tony Carleton resigned.
The city council fired Boykin shortly after the shooting, claiming the officer violated city policy because he failed to activate his body camera before or during the incident and made inappropriate social media posts in its aftermath. Also, Boykin’s then-girlfriend was an unauthorized passenger in the patrol car the night of the shooting. Boykin claimed he shot Ball in self-defense, and he sued the city for wrongful termination — a suit that was later settled.
District Attorney Scott Colom turned the criminal investigation over to the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, and a grand jury in 2016 indicted Boykin for manslaughter. Boykin was granted a change of venue in 2017 to Walthall County for his criminal trial due to heavy media coverage of the incident potentially damaging the local jury pool. The trial has still not happened, and Boykin is out on bond.
Boykin has withstood a pair of wrongful death lawsuits, as well. In one, Boykin’s name was dropped from the suit while the city negotiated a settlement with Paul Royal, who represented the Ball estate. Another suit was dropped because the plaintiff could not prove kinship to Ball.
Leadership changes define decade for CPD, CMSD
Columbus Police Department had five chiefs during the decade, and Columbus Municipal School District ran through four superintendents, not including interims.
Fred Shelton has led CPD since January 2018. But the decade started with Joseph St. John, who was fired in 2011. Selvain McQueen took the reins until his retirement in 2014 and his successor, Tony Carleton, resigned in 2016 after one of his officers fatally shot Ricky Ball.
Oscar Lewis took over in January 2016, but his leadership came under scrutiny a year later amid a spike in violent crime and a chronic officer shortage. That prompted the city to hire a consultant to study the department, and the consultant ultimately recommended replacing Lewis as chief. Lewis retired at the end of 2017 and was replaced by Shelton.
At CMSD, Cherie Labat’s hiring as superintendent in June 2018 has seemingly stopped the revolving door of leaders there, some of whom ran very controversial administrations.
After Del Phillips resigned in April 2011, Martha Liddell spent the next two years in the job — an administration marked by allegations of her using public money for private purposes, which led to her firing in June 2013.
Philip Hickman was hired in July 2014. Hickman’s four-year tenure was also marked with controversy — attempts to hire family members to positions without disclosing it to the board, losing money on a costly textbook exchange and an alleged relationship with a former CMSD student, among other things. CMSD’s board of trustees did not renew Hickman’s contract in 2017 and ultimately fired him six months before the existing contract was due to expire.
Starkville-Oktibbeha school districts consolidate
On July 1, 2015, the Starkville and Oktibbeha school districts officially merged.
Oktibbeha County School District was placed under state conservatorship in 2012 due to poor student performance and the Legislature acted in 2013 to begin its consolidation with Starkville School District.
Starkville’s leadership structure remained intact during the merger, with then-superintendent Lewis Holloway leading the unified district through the first two years of consolidation. Eddie Peasant replaced Holloway, who retired, in 2017.
As part of the plan, Mississippi State University partnered with the merged district to build a partnership school for grades 6-7 on the MSU campus. That campus is slated to open in fall 2020.
Sudduth Elementary became a K-1 campus, with Henderson Ward Stewart now housing grades 2-4 and Overstreet housing fifth grade as of 2015-16. West Oktibbeha Elementary remains open for K-5 students living in certain rural parts of the new district, but both East Oktibbeha campuses and West Oktibbeha High School were closed.
Once the partnership school is complete, Armstrong Middle School will host grades 8-9 and Starkville High will house grades 10-12.
The state set a single tax rate for the consolidated district of 63 mills, which was a near 3-mill decrease for city residents and a 4-mill increase for former county school district patrons.
2-percent restaurant sales tax expires, reinstated
Columbus and Lowndes County went almost a year without any restaurant sales tax revenue because of a disagreement in the Mississippi Legislature that allowed the tax to expire in June 2018.
The once county wide tax on prepared food and beverage sales had been on the books since the mid 1980s and had funded tourism and economic development efforts in the county. It generated nearly $2 million in Fiscal Year 2017 — the majority of which funded the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau while $250,000 annually went to the Golden Triangle Development LINK. The expiring tax required resolutions from the Columbus City Council and Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, as well as legislative approval, to be renewed.
Arguments started between the city and county in early 2017 over whether either entity should receive direct contributions from the tax, but ultimately both entities agreed to renewal terms in a joint resolution. However, both the city and county agreed to remove the $325,000 “floor” for annual prepared food and beverage revenue included in the old bill, which meant more businesses would have to collect the tax.
Rep. Jeff Smith (R-Lowndes County) led an effort to apply the floor to the renewal bill, while Sen. Chuck Younger (R-Lowndes County) vied for renewing the legislation according to the local resolutions. The argument killed the tax, forcing the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau (which received nearly 90 percent of the funds) to lay off employees and drastically slash its budget.
In April 2019, the Legislature re-established the tax to be collected only at businesses in the Columbus city limits where prepared food and beverage revenue is at least $100,000. Both the city and county get recreation funds from the tax revenue, with the rest going to the LINK and CVB.
Lynn Spruill fired as CAO in 2013, elected mayor four years later
A Starkville leader abruptly let go as the city’s chief administrative officer in 2013 returned to public service four years later as the elected mayor.
In July 2013, during the first meeting of the new term, a board of aldermen with four new elected members voted 5-2 to remove Lynn Spruill as CAO. She had served eight years in that position, and aldermen never publicly revealed a reason for their decision.
Mayor Parker Wiseman vetoed the vote, but aldermen overrode the veto by the same 5-2 margin weeks later.
When Wiseman decided not to run in 2017, Spruill — a Starkville native and local rental property manager — announced her candidacy. Spruill placed first in a three-candidate May 2 Democratic primary and edged local attorney Johnny Moore by five votes in a runoff to become Starkville’s first female mayor. Four of the five aldermen who voted to oust Spruill as CAO still sit on the board.
Moore challenged the election results, and while a special circuit court judge set the final margin at five (rather than the originally certified seven), he ruled in Spruill’s favor in July 2018. Moore passed away less than two months later.
Two MSU students arrested for attempting to join ISIS
In August 2015, an international crisis came painfully close to home with the arrest of two Mississippi State students who were arrested at Golden Triangle Regional Airport in their effort to join Islamic State fighters in Syria.
Muhammad Dakhlalla of Starkville and his girlfriend, Jaelyn Young of Jackson, were apprehended by FBI agents at the airport as they attempted to fly to Syria to join the terrorist organization.
Both pleaded guilty to the charges. Young is serving a 15-year sentence while Dakhlalla was sentenced to eight years.
At his sentencing, a penitent Dakhlalla, then 22, admitted he had been deceived by ISIS online propaganda.
“I was completely wrong about what ISIS was,” he said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re really sick and twisted. They twist Islam for their own agenda. I denounce them. I condemn them.”
LCSD builds state-of-the-art facility, runs into financial woes, changes leaders
For the Lowndes County School District, it was a decade of change that began with an ambitious building project that improved facilities on all three campuses, achieved an academic high point and ultimately helped lead to a change in leadership as the district’s finances came into question.
Early in the decade, the district announced its plans for a $75 million building project, the first phase — a $23-million project for a new Caledonia Elementary School already underway; money for additional classrooms on the West Lowndes campus; and funding for a new field-house in New Hope, funded from its cash reserves.
The second phase, to be funded by voter-approved bonds, failed to earn the 60-percent voter approval required by law in 2014. In 2015, the district again took the issue to the voters, who approved a $44-million bond that included $11 million for a centralized career-technical center; $26 million for a new high school on the New Hope campus; $3 million for upgrades and additions at the Caledonia campus; $1.9 million for a new field house at Caledonia; and $2 million for renovations on the West Lowndes campus.
The work was completed in 2018, but the spending did not. The district ran into financial trouble with deficits exceeding $2 million multiple years in a row that plummeted a once $17 million fund balance to about $4 million in 2019.
LCSD cut more than 60 first-year teaching positions at the end of the 2018-19 school year to save money and has borrowed money in tax anticipation notes to make December payroll the last two years.
Against the backdrop of the financial concerns Lynn Wright’s eight-year tenure ended as superintendent, even as the LCSD earned it first “A” accountability rating from the Mississippi Department of Education, a rating largely based on student scores on benchmark test. In November, the school board chose New Hope Middle School principal Sam Allison as superintendent, the district’s first board-appointed head.
Sports success runs rampant at all levels
At Mississippi State University, multiple Bulldog sports teams captured the national spotlight during the decade.
A resurgent women’s basketball program reached the national title game in both 2017 and 2018 under head coach Vic Schaefer. The 2017 team bronzed its place in women’s college basketball history with junior Morgan William’s overtime buzzer-beater in the national semifinals in Dallas that ended vaunted Connecticut’s 111-game winning streak.
MSU’s baseball team reached the College World Series final in 2013 and reached Omaha again in 2018 and 2019. The football program also saw a banner decade, reaching bowl games each year. Behind head coach Dan Mullen and quarterback Dak Prescott, the team ranked No. 1 for five weeks in 2014 amid a 10-win season.
At East Mississippi Community College, head football coach Buddy Stephens led his Lions to five junior college national titles and six state titles during the decade. He and his team were also featured in the first two seasons of the Netflix series “Last Chance U.”
On the high school level, West Point claimed five state titles, including a record four straight from 2016-19, during the decade. Noxubee County claimed three titles in its classification and Starkville won two.
The Yellow Jacket boys and girls, as well as Columbus High School’s boys, all claimed two basketball state titles during the decade, while New Hope’s baseball team took multiple titles.
Cold cases from the ’90s see their first arrests
Persistence and technology were key factors in making arrests in two cold case murders in Columbus and Starkville during the decade.
The three cases had remained unsolved for a combined 49 years when investigators made the first arrests — leading to the first indictments — in the cases.
In the oldest case, the 1990 murder of Betty Jones, 64, and Kathryn Crigler, 81, Sgt. Bill Lott investigated the case for more than 14 years independently of his duties as a patrol officer for Starkville Police Department. Lott and other investigators eventually discovered the DNA of the suspect, Michael Devaughn, of Rienzi, by comparing a rape kit taken during the initial investigation to a cigarette butt, ending the nearly 30-year effort to track down a potential killer in 2018.
In 2017, Columbus police made an arrest in a 1996 case when investigators matched the DNA of Jackson resident David Murry to DNA found at the scene of the murder of Mack Fowler, 71. At the time of Murry’s arrest, Columbus Crime Lab director Austin Shepherd and District Attorney Scott Colom credited the 1996 investigators who had the foresight to collect the evidence long before DNA was commonly used to solve crimes.
Both Devaughn and Murry have been indicted by grand juries in Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties, respectively, and are awaiting trial.
Growth and investment in Starkville
The decade began with a 2010 census that showed what many had projected for a few years by then — Starkville had outgrown Columbus as the largest municipality in the Golden Triangle.
While the city’s population growth has continued a slow uptick throughout the ensuing 10 years, other types of growth have been more prevalent.
Oktibbeha County has gained $119 million in assessed property value since 2010, with investments in retail and housing, especially apartment housing, leading the way.
The Russell Street corridor has developed around the Mill at MSU hotel and conference center development, and the adjacent Cotton Mill Marketplace brought more restaurants and shopping to Highway 12 near the university.
A Walmart Neighborhood Market, Academy Sports and the Parker-McGill auto dealership, just to name a few, have also developed in Starkville in recent years. Several mixed-use commercial and residential developments came to the east side of the city, including Midtown, Vista, Haven 12 and College View.
Tornado rocks Columbus’ northside
On Feb. 23, 2019, an EF-3 tornado ripped through Columbus, killing one person, damaging or destroying 275 homes and 38 businesses and leaving $9.3 million in damage to public property alone.
The storm developed in the southwest part of the city and traveled northeast from First Street through Memphistown to Tuscaloosa Road. Both Sim Scott Park Community Center and Hunt Success Academy on 14th Avenue North suffered severe damage, and plans are in place to renovate Hunt and rebuild the community center.
In the weeks following the storm, city and county officials set up emergency shelters and a volunteer aid center to assist residents.
The storm was part of a larger flooding event across the state — areas of downtown Columbus, including the Riverwalk and Lowndes County Soccer Complex were under water for several weeks after the storm — and in April, President Donald Trump declared Lowndes and six other Mississippi counties federal disaster areas. Initially, Federal Emergency Management Agency declined to provide individual assistance to private property owners and residents whose homes, businesses and other property had been damaged. Agents from Mississippi Emergency Management Agency appealed the decision and in September, FEMA announced that assistance would be available after all. From Sept. 27-Oct. 31, FEMA representatives set up a Disaster Recovery Area in the East Columbus Gym to work with residents seeking federal aid.
Dispatch reporters Zack Plair, Slim Smith, Tess Vrbin and Isabelle Altman contributed to this report.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.