Family sues over alleged hate crime in Mississippi

The family of James Craig Anderson, who was killed in June in what authorities have called a hate crime, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a group of seven white teenagers.

According to the Associated Press, the new lawsuit "tracks with police allegations that a group of teens were out looking for a black man to 'mess with' when they found 49-year-old James Craig Anderson before dawn in the parking lot of a Jackson [Mississippi] hotel."

The suit, filed Tuesday in Hinds County Circuit Court in Jackson, seeks monetary damages, but Winston Thompson, an attorney for Anderson's family, said it also aims to make sure all the facts come out.

Two of the seven teenagers named in the lawsuit have been charged in the attack on Anderson. Deryl Dedmon, 19, is charged with capital murder and robbery for allegedly running Anderson over with a Ford F-250 truck. Police say Dedmon later bragged about the act. And John Aaron Rice is charged with assault for allegedly attacking Anderson before he was run over.

The New York Times reports that the Anderson family's lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven young people said to be involved in the incident. The suit claims that while not all are directly responsible for attacking and killing Anderson, the others were negligent because they acted as "look-outs" and did not help him.

"We allege that they acted as a group, as one," Thompson told the AP.

The lawsuit said Rice, Dedmon and two others approached Anderson in the parking lot and surrounded him. It says Rice and Dedmon then attacked him "with the cooperation and encouragement" of the others. The three people who stayed in the vehicles during the attack acted as lookouts, the lawsuit said.

Dedmon is scheduled to be in court on Tuesday for a preliminary hearing.

Anderson's family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, and has yet to say much publicly about his death. The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting Thompson with the lawsuit.