Prejudice is not always black-and-white

I'm not sure this is so much a racial incident as an anti-old-folks situation:

A Tangipahoa Parish grand jury has declined to indict a boy who said he accidentally shot an Alzheimer's patient who was trying to climb the barbed wire fence around his family's house.

District Attorney Scott Perrilloux, who was asking for a negligent homicide charge against Landon McNabb, 17, said he sees no compelling reason to prosecute without an indictment for Leroy Nichols Sr.'s death on Jan. 3.

McNabb said he was firing a warning shot and accidentally hit the 76-year-old Nichols.

Attorney Terry Bonnie said the Nicholas' family is disappointed but not surprised.

Bonnie said if a white man kills a black man in Tangipahoa Parish, no one takes it seriously.

I don't think this grand jury looked at a white man shooting a black man as much as they looked at a teenager shooting a crazy old man. It wouldn't be hard to sell an all-black jury on the threat of a man crazy enough to climb a barbed-wire fence. That's how the civil suit is going to go down in this case as well.

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