FBI to Probe Case of Alleged Beating of Black Child

The FBI opened a civil rights investigation Friday in the case of a 9-year-old black child who said he was tied to a tree, punched, kicked and almost strangled by a white playmate and the playmate’s parents.

Benjamin Mims, 62, and his wife, Betty, 43, were arrested on state charges of second-degree lynching, or mob violence, a charge that does not require a racial motivation. The offense carries up to 20 years in prison. The couple were jailed for a night before posting $5,000 bail each on Wednesday.

Without elaborating, Sheriff Hoyt Collins said he does not think the alleged incident Jan. 5 was a hate crime. But FBI agents are looking into the possibility of a federal civil-rights violation, he said.

The Mimses agreed to take a lie detector test but later refused without explanation, Collins said.

Emergency room doctors said the boy’s injuries were consistent with his account.

The couple had no comment Friday, but their lawyer, Ernest A. Finney III, said: “You’re going to find out that all this ink you’re writing . . . is nothing near what actually happened.”

A small field separates the Mimses’ tan mobile home from the boy’s home--a gray shanty of plywood and tin with no telephone.

According to a sheriff’s report, the boy was at the Mims home playing with the couple’s 9-year-old son and their 13-year-old niece. Mrs. Mims got angry for some unspecified reason, told the boy to get out of her house and pushed him onto the porch.

In the yard, the children pushed the black child into the cab of Mims’ truck, then told Mims that he was stealing from the truck, sheriff’s Lt. Jackie Blackwell said.

The victim told officers that Mims shook a crowbar at him and used a racial slur. The family then forced the child into the woods behind their home and tied him to a tree, the sheriff’s report said.

Mims fired a shotgun blast past the victim’s head, then gave the gun to his son, who fired a second shot, Blackwell said.

Betty Mims held a belt around the boy’s neck until he passed out, the boy told police.

The boy eventually was freed and was told not to tell anyone what happened or his family would be killed and his house burned, authorities said.