The University of Mississippi wants to question three white male students who may have been involved in draping a noose over a statue of James Meredith, the African-American student who braved segregationist mobs to integrate the school in 1962, campus police said on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Calvin Sellers, university chief of police, said attorneys for the three 19-year-old freshman from Georgia wanted campus police to produce an arrest warrant before they would allow them to question the students about the act of vandalism on Sunday, the AP reported.
Sellers added that the three students failed to appear at a pre-arranged meeting on Thursday, according to the AP.
"The University Police Department had gathered enough evidence by late Wednesday to bring charges through the student judicial process against two of the students, and both state and federal authorities were working in close coordination to determine whether criminal charges were applicable," the university said in a statement on Friday, the AP reported.
University spokesman Danny Blanton says Friday that the school's findings have been turned over to the district attorney's office, according to the AP.
Blanton says the university will also proceed with internal disciplinary action through a judicial panel that consists of both faculty and students, the AP reported.
The questioning of the three students comes after police found a noose tied around the neck of the statue, along with an old Georgia flag with a Confederate battle emblem in its design this past Sunday, according to the AP.
Earlier this week, the university's alumni association offered a $25,000 reward for tips about the incident, and Sellers said school officials indicated that they planned to pursue federal hate crime charges, the AP reported. Seller said the reward is what helped generate leads.
A construction worker on the campus in Oxford reported seeing two men wrapping the bronze statue of Meredith in an old Georgia state flag bearing the Confederate logo, the AP reported. The vandals were also heard shouting racial slurs, according to Sellers.
