Category: Mississippi
Female accused of inserting razor blades into grocery items; hit with $100K bond
A female accused of inserting razor blades into loaves of bread at two Walmart stores in Biloxi, Mississippi, was arrested Tuesday, WJTV-TV reported.
Camille Benson, 33, of Texas, was charged with attempted mayhem, the station said, adding that her bond was set at $100,000.
‘Time to start baking my own bread.’
Customers reported finding the razor blades at a Walmart Supercenter and a Walmart Neighborhood Market, Lt. Candace Young, a public information officer for the Biloxi Police Department, told WJTV.
Walmart employees told police a customer first reported finding a razor blade in a loaf purchased from the Walmart Supercenter on Dec. 5, the station said, adding that a customer who bought a loaf at the Walmart Neighborhood Market reported finding a razor blade on Dec. 8.
Law enforcement officials said that after another customer complained to the Walmart Supercenter on Sunday, employees inspected merchandise and found several more loaves had been tampered with, WJTV reported.
The police department was notified on Monday, the station said, and asked all those who purchased bread from those Walmart locations to inspect the loaves and report any findings.
“The health and safety of our customers is always a top priority,” Walmart said in a statement, according to WJTV. “We have removed and thoroughly inspected all potentially affected products at impacted stores in Biloxi. We appreciate law enforcement for their swift action and will continue cooperating with them as they investigate.”
Police don’t believe any other stores have been targeted, the station added.
Walmart also said if customers purchase a product that has been tampered with, they should immediately throw it out and visit their local Walmart for a full refund, WJTV noted.
More than 3,000 comments have been left under WJTV’s Facebook post about the arrest, and observers didn’t hold back:
- “She doesn’t look like she is playing with a full deck,” one commenter wrote.
- “Now give her the bread she put razors in,” another user suggested.
- “The devil is really busy!” another commenter declared.
- “Bread will now be packaged in boxes with pull tabs,” another user predicted. “Wait till its price triples.”
- “Time to start baking my own bread,” another commenter stated.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Mississippi ‘miracle’ catapults 4th-grade reading scores from bottom into top 10 by getting back to phonics
In 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th out of the 50 U.S. states in grade four reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the largest continuing national assessment of American students’ knowledge and capability in math, reading, science, and writing.
In what has repeatedly been dubbed a “miracle,” the state made its way up the list — to 29th in 2019 and then 10 spots higher to ninth place nationally for reading scores last year.
According to the NAEP, black students in Mississippi ranked third nationally last year among their cohort for reading and math scores; Hispanic students in the state ranked first in the nation for reading and second for math scores; and poor students in the Magnolia State ranked first for reading and second for math scores nationally.
‘No, it’s not impossible to teach children, and no, it’s not very costly.’
The assessment noted that “Mississippi is one of only a few states with improved NAEP scores since 2013. In most states, NAEP scores have been falling over the past decade.”
While there have been numerous attempts to explain Mississippi’s success, it appears the “Mississippi miracle” is attributable ultimately to the state’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which conservative commentator Rich Lowry recently noted effectively came down to adopting phonics and setting high standards for students.
Noah Spencer, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s economics department, analyzed the impact of the LBPA — the three pillars of which are improving teaching, identifying and helping kids with reading deficiencies, and holding back third-graders who can’t hack it on an end-of-year reading assessment — in a study published last year in the Economics of Education Review. Spencer found that:
the policy, which included investments in teacher training and coaching, early screening for and targeted assistance to struggling readers, and retention for deficient readers, increased both grade 4 reading and math test scores on a national assessment by 0.14 and 0.18 [standard deviations], respectively, for students with any amount of exposure to the policy, and by 0.23 and 0.29 SDs for students with K-3 exposure to the policy.
Spencer stressed the significance of these increases, citing previous research that found “that ‘children with test scores that are one standard deviation higher at age 12 report 1-2 more years of schooling by age 22’ in the lower- and middle-income countries they study.”
RELATED: Trump admin takes major step toward dismantling Department of Education
Linda McMahon. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
“While these estimates likely do not apply precisely to Mississippi’s context, it does seem reasonable to suggest that, given the LBPA’s sizable effects on test scores for children exposed from kindergarten to grade 3, it may also increase earnings for exposed cohorts in the future,” wrote Spencer. “The impressive effects of this policy change should be noted by policymakers in other jurisdictions.”
Lowry echoed this sentiment, noting that Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee, which have employed similar strategies, have also made gains.
“With reading scores nationally sliding the wrong way, especially for the bottom 10% of students, Mississippi and the other Southern states offer a beacon of hope,” wrote Lowry. “Their example shows that, no, it’s not impossible to teach children, and no, it’s not very costly. It’s a good sign that even California just passed a phonics bill.”
‘It’s really smart, local innovation at work.’
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has extolled the approach taken in Mississippi, telling the New York Post in September, “What I’m seeing now is a great return to classical learning.”
“We’ve tried a lot of things, you know — No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — and I believe they were done with the best of intentions, but they were not successful,” said McMahon. “But what we have clearly seen is the science of reading is successful.”
Despite the noted success of the LBPA in Mississippi, some lawmakers around the country still haven’t taken the hint.
Democrats in Michigan, for instance, reportedly repealed similar reforms, eliminating, for instance, an A-F grade-ranking system for every public school in the state and scrapping the requirement that illiterate third-graders get held back.
Whereas last year, the average score of fourth-grade students in Mississippi for reading was 219/500 — higher than the national average score of 214 — the average score in Michigan was 209, which was lower than scores in 31 other states and jurisdictions.
The Mississippi Department of Education announced on Nov. 13 that 85% of the Magnolia State’s third-graders passed the reading assignment required to transition to grade four, a 1-percentage-point increase over last year.
The U.S. Department of Education noted, “Mississippi’s literacy climb may be called ‘miracle,’ but it’s really smart, local innovation at work.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Judicial Watch Statement: Supreme Court to Hear Mississippi Ballot Deadline Case
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton announced today that the Supreme Court of the United States has granted review in a landmark election integrity case brought on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The case seeks to uphold a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck […]
The post Judicial Watch Statement: Supreme Court to Hear Mississippi Ballot Deadline Case appeared first on Judicial Watch.
Mom of 5, pastor both fatally shoot escaped monkeys; authorities provide update on frantic search for animals
A Mississippi mother fatally shot a monkey to protect her children after the “aggressive” animals escaped from an overturned truck, according to multiple reports.
Police said a truck transporting 21 rhesus monkeys from Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans overturned on Interstate 59 north of Heidelberg, Mississippi — approximately 85 miles southeast of the state capital of Jackson.
‘I hate that it happened, but I’m going to protect my kids at all costs.’
On Oct. 28, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, “A truck hauling monkeys from Tulane University has overturned around the 117-mile marker, north of Heidelberg. It has been reported that several monkeys are on the loose.”
Police stressed, “Do not approach the monkeys if you see one. Call 911. They do pose potential health threats and are aggressive.”
Officials from Tulane noted that the university wasn’t transporting the monkeys, and the animals do not belong to the university, according to NBC News.
Tulane told WTVT-TV, “Non-human primates at the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center are provided to other research organizations to advance scientific discovery.”
The sheriff’s office initially warned residents that the animals “carry hepatitis C, herpes, and COVID” based on preliminary reports by the truck’s occupants.
However, the biomedical research company PreLabs — which owns and was transporting the animals — told WDAM-TV, “The animals being transported were not infected with COVID-19, hepatitis, and herpes as indicated in certain news articles.”
PreLabs added, “The animals were being lawfully transported in compliance with all federal and state regulations to a licensed research facility.”
At the time of the car accident, 13 rhesus monkeys were quickly recovered at the crash site, according to another report from WDAM-TV. Meanwhile, another five monkeys were killed near the crash site — but three escaped, according to Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson.
Jessica Bond Ferguson — a 35-year-old mother with five children who range in age from 4 to 16 — was alerted by her 16-year-old son about a monkey running around the property of their home near Heidelberg.
Ferguson said she got out of bed, grabbed her gun and her cell phone, then went outside to locate the monkey, which was roughly 60 feet away.
Ferguson told the Associated Press, “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children.”
The mom recalled, “I shot at it, and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up — and that’s when he fell.”
“If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” Ferguson declared. “It’s kind of scary and dangerous that they are running around, and people have kids playing in their yards.”
She also blasted those responsible for the monkeys’ escape, telling TMZ that “I wish it didn’t have to happen that way. I just wish they took better measures in taking care of it and trying to find them.”
Ferguson continued, “I feel like if they wanted us to do something else, then they should’ve had a search team out. They could’ve had drones flying around. They could’ve taken more measures to look for these monkeys and prevented this from happening.”
She stressed, “I hate that it happened, but I’m going to protect my kids at all costs.”
In addition, a small-town pastor neutralized one of the other escaped monkeys.
On Monday, Pastor George Barnett was in his car traveling with his two young children and his wife to visit his mother at her home in Vossburg when his wife allegedly spotted a monkey near the highway.
NBC News reported the monkey “scampered into a tree and flashed its teeth.”
With that, Barnett, 45, grabbed his rifle and fired twice, the news network reported, and the monkey fell to the ground.
Barnett told NBC News, “As soon as I saw it, the only thing I thought about was, ‘What if this thing attacks one of those people that I grew up with, or my children?'”
On Thursday, the last escaped monkey was captured.
The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks told the Associated Press that a resident who lives near the crash site told authorities about the monkey’s location, and authorities “successfully recovered” the animal.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol is investigating the cause of the crash.
PreLabs and the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Vance schools yappy student on problems with immigration: ‘There’s too many people who want to come’
Vice President JD Vance taught college students an important lesson on the problems associated with mass immigration at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday.
After delivering his prepared remarks with Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk — emphasizing the importance of avoiding pointless foreign entanglements, securing America’s borders, and altogether prioritizing citizens — Vance respectfully gave a few students much-needed reality checks.
One of the questioners prefaced by noting that his girlfriend was studying in the country on a student visa, then asked Vance about his views on legal immigration.
‘My job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world.’
“Thanks in part to the Biden border invasion but also thanks in part to a lot of bad immigration policy, right now, we have let in too many immigrants into the United States of America,” Vance responded.
The Pew Research Center recently indicated that as of January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. — the largest number ever recorded. Over 15% of all U.S. residents and 19% of the U.S. labor force were immigrants.
The vice president suggested that “the evidence is pretty clear” that a great many of the over 1 million migrants who legally enter the U.S. every year “are actually undercutting the wages of American workers,” and suggested that such wage suppression is what prompted President Donald Trump and his administration to encourage H-1B reform.
Vance indicated further that while the intended function of the H-1B visa is to attract and retain top talent from around the world, “what it’s actually used to do is hire an accountant at a 50% discount to an American citizen. I don’t think that we should be hiring accountants from foreign countries when we’ve got accountants right here in the United States that would love to work for a good wage.”
RELATED: Camp of the H-1B Saints
Photo by Brad Vest/Getty Images
“We have got to get our overall numbers way, way down,” the vice president said, adding that the nation needs time to “build a sense of common identity” before admitting more people.
Vance’s remarks evidently vexed a young female student of apparent Indian origin in the crowd who used her time at the microphone to complain both about the vice president’s stated desire for his Hindu wife to one day join him in following Christ as well as his desire to taper the number of immigrants legally admitted into the United States.
“When you talk about too many immigrant [sic] here, what is — when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream? You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream,” the woman said.
“How can you as a vice president stand there and say that ‘we have too many of them now, and we are going to take them out’ to people who are here, rightfully so?” she asked.
After clarifying that he was proposing greatly reducing the number of foreigner admissions in the future while honoring past promises to previous entrants, Vance stressed between interruptions from the woman that immigration policy should be adapted to the circumstances of the day.
“We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future,” the vice president said. “There’s too many people who want to come to the United States of America, and my job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world. It’s to look out for the people of the United States.”
While the questioner did not appear all too pleased with Vance’s America-first answer, the crowd burst into applause.
Before the conclusion of the event, the vice president told the crowd, “Despair is a sin. Do not give in to the sin of despair. Let’s keep fighting to save the United States of America.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
