MARSHALL COUNTY, Miss. — Days after a Marshall County, Mississippi, man admitted to burning several “Biden-Harris” campaign sign, the man has yet to be charged with a crime.
The NAACP and the owner of the signs are demanding he face charges, and they said the sheriff’s office is intentionally dragging its feet on the case. Francine Boga took cell phone video October 11th of Brian Gurley standing over a smoldering pile of her Biden-Harris campaign signs at Lake Shore drive and Highway 178.
“He needs to go to jail for defacing my signs and burning my signs,” Boga said.
Gurley claimed the signs were on his property, when in fact, they were on the state’s right of way and should not have been placed there or removed other than by a member of the MDOT.
“I burnt them signs because I had so many of them in my trunk and hell I was cold. It was raining that day if you can tell. I was cold, so I burned them,” Gurley said.
Now, ten days later, Boga said the sheriff’s department has not moved quickly enough to charge Gurley.
“It’s like, they’re passing the buck. They’re passing the buck and they’re not really, I don’t think, taking this serious. I believe they thought we were just going to leave it alone, let it die down, but I’m not,” Boga said.
Boga, along with leaders of the Marshall County branch NACCP said errors in the incident report are confusing.
“The narrative actually is recorded four hours before the dispatch happened, and that’s where I find the flaw,” Johnnie Houston said.
The mistake, claims the NAACP, is preventing Boga from signing an affidavit that is accurate, and they also said Gurley told investigators he has relatives in the sheriff’s department.
Sheriff Kenny Dickerson confirmed Gurley has two “distant relatives” in the department but stressed that would not stop him from arresting Gurley, if a warrant is issued.
Sheriff Dickerson said the inaccuracies in the incident report do not prevent Boga from filing a complaint and having a warrant issued for Gurley’s arrest — something the sheriff said he would gladly do.