Sean Callebs, CNN, January 15, 2009
Mychal Bell says he felt pressure to be perfect after his part of 2006’s “Jena 6” assault case was over. When police alleged last month that he wasn’t, the Louisiana teen took his Christmas money and sought a gun to kill himself.
Distraught after being arrested on suspicion of shoplifting and battery, the 18-year-old Bell says, he pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger.
The gun misfired, and he aimed at his chest and tried again. The bullet ripped through his body, and he fell to the floor of his grandmother’s home in Monroe on December 29.
“It just got to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Bell, who is recovering from the wound, said in an interview with CNN. Video Watch Bell describe shooting himself »
In December 2006, Bell—then an all-state running back for Jena High’s football team—was one of six black teenagers charged in adult court with attempted murder and conspiracy charges in the beating of a white classmate in Jena, Louisiana, an incident that followed months of racial tensions in the community of about 3,000 people.
{snip}
“I just wanted to show everybody that I really wasn’t the type of kid that everybody was making me out to be,” said Bell, who worked out with his school’s team even though he couldn’t play in games. “Nobody will ever be perfect, but it’s like that’s where my mind was. You need to be perfect.”
Bell said he felt people were constantly watching him, hoping he’d fail: ” ‘Just mess up, just mess up.’ There was a lot of pressure on me.”
So he was devastated, he said, when he was accused of shoplifting at a Monroe mall on December 24.
Police say surveillance video appears to show Bell stuffing merchandise into a bag in a Dillard’s store while another male seems to serve as a lookout.
Bell walked out with the bag without paying, officials said, and a security guard approached and took it from him. Police said Bell and the other male fled, and guards chased Bell because he’d had the bag. Authorities say it contained $370 worth of clothes.
Bell hid under a car in the parking lot, and as a store security officer tried to pull Bell out, he hit the guard in the face with his elbow, police said. Bell, who was charged with shoplifting, simple battery and resisting arrest, was released on bail, according to authorities.
Investigators don’t know who the other male was, and Bell “admitted to everything” to a detective, Lt. Jeff Harris said.
In his CNN interview in Monroe, Bell—who is back in school despite being in pain from his wound and subsequent surgery—didn’t comment on the shoplifting allegations because the case is pending.
But he said he “cried every day” after the arrest and “could never get back right.”
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: An earlier story of Mychal Bell’s attempt to commit suicide can be read here. here.
Original article
(Posted on January 16, 2009)
Comments
A person attempting to commit suicide with a pistol puts it to his head, not the outside of his chest. The original report was that it went off while he was “cleaning it.” I think he was just “messing with it.” But now we are supposed to see how this poor boy was driven to dispair.
“an incident that followed months of racial tensions in the community of about 3,000 people”.
An incident simply due to months of racial tensions… No mention of a hate-crime reguarding the incident? What is it the police say? “Nothing to see here, move along”
Sounds more and more like Rodney King.
Rodney King went back to do the same old, same old.
That’s what they do.
Mychal Bel, Rodney King, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Willie Horton…. they do what they do.
Just understand the situation and profile.
Again, suicide is a trait of people who are smart enough and moral enough to feel shame or embarrassment. Mr. Bell does not strike me as a man of these qualities. In fact, that’s why the suicide rate among whites is far higher than among blacks.
I would really like to know the truth about this gun incident.
“…an incident that followed months of racial tensions in the community…”
This genius was a multiple offender with a history of violent assaults, after being given every break in the world, he says he couldn’t take the pressure of having to be perfect? As the saying goes, YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID.
“Bell said he felt people were constantly watching him, hoping he’d fail: ” ‘Just mess up, just mess up.’ There was a lot of pressure on me.”
Hahahaha. “A lot of pressure” on him. Really funny.
Most white kids go through their teen years without incident not feeling as if they’re under pressure from most people, but this thug feels as if just behaving himself every day is so excrutiatingly painful he can’t stand it anymore……….I mean, until he gets caught for pulling what was one of probably a dozen crimes. What is it the police say? A robber or buglar pulls about a dozen or more jobs before he gets caught?
I agree with the above poster who thinks the gun misfired while he was playing with it, and I’m betting he bought it to commit an armed robbery or another type of crime.
That Jena incident was one of the most outrageous injustices in the annals of crime, and the way those thugs were elevated to heroic status was truly sickening.
CNN was the biggest fabricator of this story, but the other outlets, including Fox News, failed to report the story accurately and reveal the outrage or to criticize the blacks for supporting a gang of criminals, or to call it by its rightful name: A black on white hate attack.
Why does the media give any attention to this stuff? It’s as bad as the MSM inviting Al Sharpton on their shows so he can pontificate about how much more needs to be done to makes things equal for blacks.
“Bell-then an all state running back”. This is a real problem we have and I have no idea how to correct it. Most communities and school systems take these guys that can run with a football or basketball and put them on some sort of pedestal. While being a high school athlete is a good thing it normally doesn’t prepare the young person for a future. They get treated like Gods for a time, until their potenial runs out and they can no longer make the grade and then you just have another dummy looking for menial work. They end up with a deflated ego and a bad attitude.
The problem is this, how do you keep these guys from being put on a pedestal in the first place. Many of these guys get an ego the size of Texas and then a big let down. Most will never accomplish anything in real life and yet they feel they have made a real contribution to society. They assume that society will treat them with kid gloves forever because they have small time celebity statis. Prisons are full of them.
If Bell were some nice kid that just studied hard at math he would never end up with celebrity statis in the first place with an ego that says I can do anything and get away with it.
How do we expect to compete with countries like India and China where they search out gifted students in academics and we search out students that can run with a football until his knees go bad? We make touchdowns and they make the televisions that they are shown on.
Most football players never make any money and almost all engineers do. If anyone thinks that people like Bell will have ambitions to become president then they are crazy. Most teens don’t see the rewards that they can get in 20 years but only the rewards of the next few months.
Garret Hardin stated, “can we expect people to make the right decisions when we keep giving rewards for making the wrong one’s”?
“Bell said he felt people were constantly watching him, hoping he’d fail: ” ‘Just mess up, just mess up.’ There was a lot of pressure on me.” So he was devastated, he said, when he was accused of shoplifting at a Monroe mall on December 24.”
It’s so hard being perfect - why you may have to go months at a time without shoplifting.
He says he was worried people would say he screwed up. All he had to do to avoid this was not to steal or shoplift. Pretty easy thing to do…..but he couldn’t do it.
He has a history of violence and arrests. What is he doing with a gun anyway?
This is becoming a common trend in the media. Whenever the media makes us feel sorry for certain Africans, they still go out and commit crimes. Take Rodney King or the Goetz self defense shooting. King still lived a life of crime and managed to waste the millions of dollars given him, and the supposedly innocent black thugs that Goetz shot got convicted of even more crimes afterwards.
Only the names change.
Can you imagine having a son you love with all your heart and sending him to attend high school with violent psychopaths like Mychal Bell and friends? When your son is harmed, it is assumed that he deserved it simply because the Blacks involved say he did. Any reason the Blacks give for the beating is considered justified and is automatically believed, no questions asked.
Absolutely awful, but this is the state of our nation today.
Isn’t Mr. Bell the same young man who beat his girlfriend so badly her eye was dislocated from its socket? Yes, I believe he is! He’s just a misunderstood youth (yoot?) who acts up from time to time because of the stress of living in a (temporarily) White country. Who can blame him? I sure can’t and I know you can’t either.
Let’s say his ancestors came from Zimbabwe. If they hadn’t been dragged to the U.S. against their will those hundreds of years ago, he would be in Zimbabwe right now enjoying paradise, perhaps picking a mango from a low hanging branch beside a clear sparkling stream, as the babes gather water in their jewel-encrusted pitchers. Oh, yes, life would be so vastly much better over there living in a country filled with people who reason and act just like him, plus lots of babes. (Hopefully they won’t mind losing an occasional eye!)
Mr. Bell certainly seems like he is a victim of racial predjudice. And in this “new dawn” of “awakening” in America, he should be rewarded with some taxpayer dollars, courtesy of the working classes. Instead of trying to off himself, he should have merely asked his President/Select Obama, for a bailout. I’m sure some nice crisp Benjamin’s would ease Mr. Bell’s troubled mind……
I live in the area and am familiar with Bell. I can guarantee you that he didn’t try to kill himself. Doubtless he was screwing around with the gun and it went off because he IS just that stupid. Moreover, if he had a gun it was with the intent of committing a crime because that is all that boy has ever done. He’s a career criminal.
Bell says he “isn’t perfect”, which is certainly the case, but examining his past we see:
1. He and friends beat the daylights out of a white student at school.
2. He committed shoplifting.
3. He shot himself.
Bell appears to have some very serious impulse-control problems. We haven’t heard the last of him, I’m sure.
A white kid who did these things would have local authorities looking up the involuntarily committal laws, but since this level of irresponsible behavior among blacks is so common society has come to regard it as “normal”, we’re given the usual “move along; nothing to see.”
Note that he wanted to go to college…to play football. Give you a hint about what college football has become?
“Can you imagine having a son you love with all your heart and sending him to attend high school with violent psychopaths like Mychal Bell and friends?”
Can you imagine having a son you love with all of your heart and seeing him go through all Bell did in the media? even if many people felt it was 100% deserved?
That’s what Mychal Bell’s mother went through.
