Local & State Headlines

NAACP talks Lee County bus incident

• A National Association for the Advancement of Colored People spokesman accuses a Lee County school employee of erasing evidence.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — Ezekiel Holley, third vice president of the Georgia NAACP, says the transportation director for Lee County schools tampered with a video that showed 2-3 older white students beating a black 9-year-old aboard a county school bus in January.

The transportation director, Ricky Canterbury, was charged with contempt and paid a fine last month when he did not bring the video to a hearing in Lee County Magistrate Court on disorderly conduct charges filed against the boy’s mother, Cherran Carter, who’d argued with the school bus driver.

The charges against Carter were dropped, but she complained to the state NAACP, which asked Holley, of Dawson, to look into the incident, one that led to her son’s suspension from school for five days.

“We wanted to know,” Holley asked the Lee Board of Education Monday, “had (you) been briefed?”

The board took action on a number of issues during the regular meeting after a heated exchange between Holley and board member Louis Hatcher.

When Holley, Canterbury, Carter and the elementary school principal viewed the tape together, Carter “insisted that it was not all of the tape,” which she’d viewed previously, and that a portion that showed the start of the bus conflict was missing, Holley said at an earlier news conference.

Responding to Holley at the meeting, Lee Superintendent of Schools Larry Walters said the system had completed its investigation and “dealt with Mr. Canterbury as an employee.”

“We did not determine that Mr. Canterbury lied; we did find that Mr. Canterbury did not follow the order of the court,” Walters said.

Walters said the system had “put in place some checks and balances to ensure that this will never happen again.”

But Hatcher, an attorney, though not the system’s attorney, grilled Holley about his accusation that Canterbury tampered with the tape.

“Outside of the tapes not being produced to the magistrate, what evidence do you have that the tapes were tampered with?” Hatcher asked.

Leesburg attorney Patrick Eidson had represented Carter at the hearing.

“I would have expected” Eidson, “a good friend,” to have “contacted me if he felt there was something so serious as tampering with the evidence,” Hatcher said.

“Do you have any evidence besides what Ms. Carter said?” he asked.

“I don’t believe she would perjure herself,” Holley said.

“The answer to my question that you are evading is you do not have any evidence other than what Ms. Carter said,” Hatcher said.

“Ms. Carter was a victim,” having three times been to court on a warrant that was dismissed,” Holley said. “The parent has rights; the child has rights.

“The matter has been dealt with; I don’t think we’re finished with it, though.”

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