Fishing Trip Turned Hate Crime: Danville Alderman Recounts Armed Confrontation in Paris, Illinois

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00] Reginald Hardwick:  From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, news and public affairs director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. On April 3rd, Jaleel Jones and two of his cousins, Tajon King and Dwayne Williams, decided to go fishing. Jones is the Ward One alderman in Danville. White Oaks Park in Paris, Illinois is known for its catfish, and according to Jones, the nighttime is the right time to catch them. While there, the three black men were confronted by 3 white men who shouted racial slurs and retrieved a shotgun and pointed it at one of the victims' heads. 

[00:00:53] 911 operator: What's your emergency it's it's people out here
[00:01:00] Caller they trying to kill us. At uh At um Paris Illinois we at the fishing bank.

[00:01:11] Reginald Hardwick: The three white suspects were later arrested and now face a variety of criminal charges. Jesse Coleman has been charged with attempted first-degree murder. His brother Jordan Coleman has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, and a third man, Jaden Reynolds, has been charged with unlawful delivery of a firearm to a felon. Beyond those charges, all 3 men have also been charged with a hate crime. On Friday, all 3 pleaded not guilty. In addition to the charges, there are concerns about how the 911 operators handled calls for help from Alderman Jones and his cousins. We'll talk with investigative reporters looking into that aspect of the story. But first, we're going to hear more from one of the victims, Danville Alderman Jaleel Jones, who spoke with Brian Mackey on our statewide talk show, the 21st Show earlier this week.

[00:02:13] Jaleel Jones: I've been fishing since I think around 10 or 11.
[00:02:19] Brian Mackey: Tell me about night fishing. So you're out there at night. This is not something I, I fished a little when I was a kid. I'm not that familiar with it though. What what's the benefit of night fishing?
[00:02:29] Jaleel Jones: Night fishing is when, well, me and all my friends, we believe that's when the big fish come out, catfish.
[00:02:37] Brian Mackey: Catfish is, uh, White Oaks Park. What is that? Is that Twin Lakes that's down there? Is that known as a catfish spot?
[00:02:43] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:02:45] Brian Mackey: Yeah. So, and, and just to be clear, this is like, uh, this is one of those parks. It's open late, right? It expects people to be out there fishing at night.
[00:02:53] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, yeah, I believe so. Uh, we usually fish on the actual road that goes through Paris on the um main street, but this time we wanted to go to the back cause uh my cousin said him and his father and a couple of their friends, they were catching some big fish back there.
[00:03:14] Brian Mackey: Nice. So do you have a lot of gear with you when you're out there fishing on a night like this? Do you have spotlights or anything, or are you just taking what light you can get?
[00:03:21] Jaleel Jones: We had some headlights, had a couple of headlights, and, um, we use the car lights sometimes. Turn it off and on, make sure the battery don't die.
[00:03:30] Brian Mackey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right, so when do things start to get, uh, you know, concerning? When do you start to sense that this is not gonna be an ordinary night of fishing?
[00:03:40] Jaleel Jones: Um, well, really I felt uncomfortable when, uh, the three men hopped out the car and basically told us that they were gonna throw 7 poles in the water, kind of like they're gonna throw over our poles. Not really like very concerning, just like, OK, um. OK, really? OK.
[00:04:05] Brian Mackey They just come up to you and no, you didn't say anything. I mean, they're just. Decided this is what they're gonna do on a Friday night, it seemed to you.
[00:04:12] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, I guess. I mean, it't, it wasn't like a real concern because people do night fish, so we didn't really take it as a concern until they started saying things that were concerning.
[00:04:25] Brian Mackey: Well, yeah, when, when did you get the feeling that like, You know, things were kind of heading south.
[00:04:32] Jaleel Jones: The first, when I first started feeling uncomfortable was when they said the N-word from the start. They said something grouped up together and then you hear the N-word. And then after that they walk up to me and kind of surround me, all three of the men.
[00:04:52] Brian Mackey: Can I ask you, I know this is a difficult subject, and I appreciate again you talking through it with us. Is that something you hear a lot in 2026?
[00:05:00] Jaleel Jones: You kind of hear the word get thrown out there a lot, but I don't know how to
[00:05:06] Brian Mackey: in anger, I guess. I mean, is that, you know, from, from white men?
[00:05:12] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, but no, you kind of, it's like I said, it is 20202026 and people basically just throw the word out there. All the time now. it's like a normal thing, but the way that they were using it and the aggression they used with it kind of made it uncomfortable.
[00:05:35] Brian Mackey: So what were they asking you to leave or what did you get, what did you get the sense that they wanted to pick a fight? What did you think was happening?
[00:05:41] Jaleel Jones: It kind of felt like they were trying to antagonize us to start something with them, to, you know, make it a problem that they were trying to make a problem. They wanted us to start the problem basically.
[00:05:53] Brian Mackey: So, yeah, how did you how did you all react?
[00:05:57] Jaleel Jones: I'm cool and collected. We didn't really feed into it. We didn't give them, well, in my thoughts from the start, I thought they had guns on them from the start because how they surrounded us. All just like three good dudes. Walking up, it's 11 something at night, dark, pitch dark, and they just walk up and all three of them surround you. And basically sizing me up.
[00:06:27] Brian Mackey: Were you fearful at this point?
[00:06:30] Jaleel Jones: Not really fearful, just concerned and I was alert, basically.
[00:06:35] Brian Mackey: Yeah. So at one point I understand they, well, tell me, tell me what, when did they retrieve a weapon? When do you know? When do you go from suspecting they have a gun to knowing they have one?
[00:06:46] Jaleel Jones: Um, when the one of the brothers goes to the, the car and pulls out a shotgun and shoots it in the air.
[00:06:57] Brian Mackey: What's going through your mind at that moment?
[00:07:02] Jaleel Jones: What, what, what's gonna go on? Like, are they gonna kill us? Is this real? Is this really happening, basically.
[00:07:11] Brian Mackey: Have you ever experienced anything like this before?
[00:07:13] Jaleel Jones: No, never. No.
[00:07:16] Brian Mackey: So, uh, at some point you, uh, You try to call 911. Tell me about that.

[00:07:24] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, I. Um, when they got the shotgun and they put it to my cousin's head, all three of the dudes were down there talking to him. He's trying to negotiate, tell them that we can leave, you know, trying to calm the situation down and Like I said, he had the shotgun to my cousin's head, so I just went. To the car first to see if his gun was in the car cause I was going to get the gun out of the car because we both are concealed to carry holders, but I didn't bring my gun with me but I know he had his so they saw me at the car and basically said get away from the car, excuse my language, and that's when I pulled out my phone and called 911.

[00:08:12] Brian Mackey: And what did, how did you feel that call went, right? Because there's been some, a lot of talk after the fact about what job the dispatchers did.
[00:08:21] Jaleel Jones: Um, It's really crazy cause I I haven't listened to the call. After I still haven't listened to the call, I just heard a little part on when the show started that's kind of surprising. I, I could hear the, the fear in my in my voice, but um I think the call, I wasn't really focused as much on the call as much as I was the dudes. So I, I believe the, I couldn't really tell you how I felt the call went because I wasn't really, yeah, I was the adrenaline,
[00:08:58] Brian Mackey: yeah,
[00:08:58] Jaleel Jones: I'm trying to talk and I'm trying to make sure that I'm not getting shot, but I'm also trying to, you know, let the police know what's going on, the dispatch know what's going on, so it was kind of like The first phone call was kind of like insane.
[00:09:13] Brian Mackey: Yeah. So eventually, was it, it was your cousin, you said you and your cousin are both concealed carry permit holders, and he eventually did, uh, retrieve his weapon. Yeah? Tell, tell me what happened.
[00:09:27] Jaleel Jones: Yeah, so he apparently had his weapon in his, um, tackle bag and he grabbed the weapon when the dude dudes came down there to me after. They saw me first go to the car, try to get in the car, and then they thought I was trying to get something out of the trunk and then they came down there and uh he saw that I had called the police. And he said, so you called the police? and I'm playing like, no, I didn't, I didn't call the police. And that's when he told his brother to bring that shotgun down there and blow my head off.

[00:10:07] Brian Mackey: And so ultimately your cousin. Opens fire on on these guys. I mean he strikes one of them.
[00:10:14] Jaleel Jones: So after he does that, after the dude tells his brother to come down there and blow our heads off, the dude with the shotgun comes down there and puts it towards me and my other cousin that were still on the other side of the car and It was like uh we just started like, I guess it was instinct to start walking the opposite way of them. And uh the brother. The brother had said like he was saying like, oh you don't think I got it on me? You don't think I got it on me? You don't think I got it on me. So me and my other cousin, we just ran because Though we're gonna get shot. And uh that's when my cousin had returned fire towards them.
[00:11:06] Brian Mackey: How do you ultimately get away?
[00:11:11] Jaleel Jones: We just run.
[00:11:13] Brian Mackey: I mean, did you, did you drive off? Did they drive off? Did you have to leave your gear behind? What, what, what was the ultimate, you know,
[00:11:19] Jaleel Jones: you mean after everything happened?
[00:11:22] Brian Mackey: Well, yeah, so how, I guess how does, how does this episode come to an end, right? Because I understand the police took, and I know you may had a lot of adrenaline going on, took a long time to figure out where you were and get there,
[00:11:32] Jaleel Jones: yeah, yeah, and I, uh, so when we ran, um, When we ran, that's when the gunshots went off. And then me and my one cousin, we ran um behind the houses. We ran past some trees and some behind some houses and uh well I had fell, um, I thought I got shot cause I had my leg had gave out, so I thought I got shot. And uh then I fell again when I got back up so I really thought I got shot. So we're running behind the house, it's just like basically hiding kind of and um Then you hear the truck rev up just and then you hear shotgun shots going off while they're driving towards us. So we're still hiding, we're hiding and uh that's when I end up calling the police again and we go back towards my cousin cause we had to see if he was dead or alive or whatever and The car lights had came on, his car lights had came on. And me and my cousin, I pulled my cousin back like no, let's go back cause I don't know if it's them or who's in the car, so let's wait and see when the car pulls up. And the car pulls up. Well, it doesn't pull up. He's my cousin screams, Yo, it's me, it's me. Come, come on, it's me, it's me. So we run to the car. And we get in the car and as we're gonna pull off we got some expensive stuff. We got hellcats and stuff like that and a lot of expensive gear. He's like, man, y'all wanna get our stuff? and I'm like, yeah, let's get our stuff. We get our stuff, just throw it all in the car and then we take off.

[00:13:23] Brian Mackey: So you got your fishing gear, you took off. Where did you go?
[00:13:27] Jaleel Jones: We went back to Danville.
[00:13:29] Brian Mackey: Yeah, didn't want to hang out in Paris.
[00:13:31] Jaleel Jones: No, no, no, no, I
[00:13:34] Brian Mackey: understand that city of lights. it is not at that time, at least, um, so what, what, what did you hear next? I mean, did you, were you still trying to get in touch with people down there after that in the day, I guess we, you know, we could move a couple of days and, and weeks,
[00:13:49] Jaleel Jones: so I went, um. After we got back to Danville, I ended up going home and seeing my girlfriend and then I left and I went to my mom's and I called the police off my mom's phone and wanted to see if anybody ever got down there. To where we were at. And uh they were trying to transfer me over but I was exhausted. I didn't wanna talk and so I just went home and looked at my phone at like cause I was up and down, up falling asleep, waking back up and I looked at my phone at around. Uh, I can't remember the time, but I had a phone call, a missed phone call from the ierce PD.
[00:14:39] Brian Mackey: How did you, uh, how did you process what happened? I mean, this is a really traumatic thing to
[00:14:45] Jaleel Jones: go through. I'm still processing it now. It's still something that, you know, It's a, it's a, it's a weird thing. It's a, it's a weird. Thing to process. I've never I, I've never been in a, in a situation like that, and I never I never even thought I'd ever be in a situation like that. It's, it's a weird thing to process, really. just an unbelievable thing that happened.
[00:15:12] Brian Mackey: You know, it's interesting. Can I, can I ask what you think about, you know, concealed carry as a matter of, I mean, you, you say yourself as a concealed carry holder. You said you never really thought you'd be in that situation, um. Surely, I mean, is it, you know, what it's it's some because it's a politically charged topic, right? People don't don't like it, some people don't like it, some people think it's very, uh, you know
[00:15:35] Jaleel Jones: I believe it's it's um something that is needed nowadays for various different situations, um, you know, um, people get robbed, people kidnap people. it's just something that I think if you are mentally and you can mentally deal with something like that, being able to carry a gun and protect people, I think it's something that we need because Crazy things like this go on and that's the only thing that saved us that night was a concealed car.

[00:16:13] Brian Mackey: Yeah. I'm Brian Mackey. We are talking about an episode that happened April 3rd in Paris, Illinois at a place called White Oaks Park. Uh, three white men allegedly, they've been charged in, uh, state court with this, uh, used racial epithets, uh, and, uh, fired a shotgun, and two of them have been accused of attempted murder. All three of them have been accused of a hate crime. And we are speaking today with one of the people they were seemingly targeting, Jaleel Jones. He happens to be an alderman in Danville. He was out fishing. That Friday night with his cousins Tajon King and Dwayne Williams. It it does seem like some of the reporting afterwards that police dispatch or or the county dispatch was a little confused about where you were and what sort of response was needed. It was initially coded as a domestic. Let me ask you though, as you jump forward a couple of weeks, you said you got that phone call, you saw that missed call from the police department in Paris. How do you rate, you know, what the authorities there have done in the time since?
[00:17:16] spk_3: They have did. Everything possible to get the criminals off the streets, and I'm very grateful for that. At first I was a little worried because We didn't get any response when we called the police 3 times, but Talking to The detectives They were very um respectful, very. Kind and Seem to be very um. Aggressively getting this, getting the people that did this to us. Very aggressive manner, making sure that justice was served.

[00:18:02] Brian Mackey: You've been to court. I know at least once. I don't know if you also went last Friday, but um what was that like for you?
[00:18:09] Jaleel Jones: Uh, It was a little, it was, it was a little awkward going in there and um Just seeing them. There And I see the Jaden dude, but it was a little awkward being there, but it was something that I felt like I had to do. I had to be there to to show them that who I was and you know. That it was, it was, it was a crazy experience that we went through and that I was gonna be here and that I'm still here to show that, you know. We're gonna fight this and this, this gotta stop.
[00:18:50] Brian Mackey: What do you, uh, You know, this is like, maybe this is a cliche question, but what, what does this make you feel about life in America and Illinois and East Central Illinois in 2026, right? That this kind of thing happens.
[00:19:04] Jaleel Jones: It's just a real surprising thing that this still happens like um. My whole life I've been around different People, different cultures, you know, I've, I've did pretty much everything that anybody does, not just what black people do or white people do or Mexican people. I've did pretty much everything and I've got all types of friends and It's just, it was just a weird experience that people That they could treat us like that. It was, it was very, very, very unpleasant. It was a very unpleasant thing to go through and the whole time. It was, it was just like, I'm a real good listener and I'm a real good like uh talker. To get an understanding of people and at that moment when that was happening, it was no like common ground. We couldn't get any common ground between us like we were trying to leave, we didn't want problems, we didn't want anything to happen. we were just gonna leave and you know, go home and it just felt like we were trapped, was no way out, and yeah, it's just so. That going on in 2026 was a very, very unpleasant thing, and I just think we need to Come together as people in general, like all lives matter, just not one certain type of life, not just black lives, white lives. I think all lives matter and everybody should be treated equally.

[00:20:51] Reginald Hardwick: You're listening to Dialogue from Illinois Soul. I'm Reginald Hardwick. Now let's turn to the law enforcement response to the victims calls for help. Kaighla White, founder and executive director and editor in chief for the Vermillion Times, and Kirk Allen, founder and reporter with Edgar County Watchdogs, an investigative reporting news outlet, also joined the 21st show to talk about concerning actions taken by the 911 operators in this case.
[00:21:22] Brian Mackey: All right, Kaighla, I'm gonna start with you. What can you tell us about, uh, the, the three people who were arrested? Maybe we can start with the Coleman brothers.
[00:21:31] Kaighla White : Yeah, absolutely. So both Jordan and Jesse Coleman have a long criminal record in both Edgar County and in their home county of Effingham. Um, we're talking aggravated battery, uh, I can't recall if that's Jordan or Jesse, uh, one of them as well ran from the police, um, when they were being, um, when they were, you know, supposed to be arrested for something. They, they both are felons, um, and so. It's not surprising, you know, looking at what happened that that they would have been involved in something like that.
[00:22:05] Kirk Allen: What about uh Jaden uh Reynolds, who is not a brother, but has also been, I guess he was charged with delivering a weapon to a felon and also a hate crime as all of them were.
[00:22:17] Kaighla White : Yeah, so Jaden Reynolds, actually, I haven't been able to find much of a criminal record for him at all aside from traffic tickets. Um, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I just haven't found it, uh, and, and what's interesting is that he didn't just deliver the weapon, he actually traded. The weapon, it was a 12 gauge pump action shotgun. He traded that for a PlayStation 5, according to the Assistant state's attorney Lauren McQueen, uh, when she read it out at the arraignment hearing, and he also purchased the ammunition that was used that night from the local ruling.

[00:22:50] Brian Mackey: Mm. All right. And I guess this is a good time to say, as I did at the top of the show, all three men pleaded not guilty to these charges in court on Friday. And I, I reached out to all the attorneys involved uh for, for all the men. I didn't hear back from 2 of them. But, uh, Mr. Reynolds' lawyer Richard Cash did write back to say, Uh, no comment basically at this time. Um, also heard from the prosecutor, I should say, who, uh, you know, had, you know, didn't have much to say but did say, quote, these allegations are not something we stand for in Edgar County and these defendants do not represent Edgar County. My office will be prosecuting this matter in accordance with law and in the same manner in which we prosecute all of our cases, which is fairly vigorously and in the interest of justice. Kirk Allen with Edgar County Watchdogs. I want to bring you in now. Let's talk about the 911 calls. Um, maybe we should just start with sort of a baseline. How are they handled in Edgar County? And, you know, what, what does that tell us about what we're about to hear when we listen to some of these clips?

[00:23:55] Kirk Allen: Well, uh, thanks, thanks again for having me. Um, basically, our 911 system is, uh, what's called an E 911, enhanced 911 system. And when that call comes in, if the, if the dispatcher is actually looking at the screen, they're gonna see what's called a CAD system that displays the map of the where that, you know, the caller is triangulated from, and they're gonna have a really close proximity as to where they're at, um, you know, within, you know, 1015 ft typically. Um, we've had quite a history with our dispatch center. Uh, I'm a local fire chief, volunteer chief here in Kansas, and we actually started the Edgar County Watchdogs because of a 911 call six years ago. And we had uncovered that our dispatchers had not been certified for 6 years to dispatch medical calls. But when I asked the board about that, they outright lied to me, and I thought, gosh, if they're going to lie about that, what else are they lying about? And there began the, you know, the beginnings of the Edgar County watchdogs, and we fast forward 16 years and within about 12 hours of these calls, I was contacted by some whistleblowers, and they said when I listen to these dispatch calls, they're going to understand why they're as upset as they know I'm going to be. And anybody that's listened to him and understands 911 calls knows that this was a failure across the board. Uh, and I think, I don't think it's intentional from the, the dispatcher standpoint, but it points to the lack of training, proper training. Um, I mean, there's just a lot of questions that need to get answered on this.

[00:25:34] Brian Mackey: Yeah. All right, well, let's, let's listen to a snippet. Um, this is, uh, I think from the first call came from Jones, uh, Jahliil Jones himself. Um, and I'll, I'll mention, you can hear a racial epithet, apparently shouted on the recording here, we did bleep it out.

[00:25:52] 911 Operator: Edgar County. 911, what's your emergency? it's it's people out here
[00:25:59] Caller: they trying to kill us. At uh At um Paris Illinois we at the fishing bank.
[00:26:10] Caller: a fishing lake. We don't got nothing, bro. Yeah we don't got nothing bro. We don't got nothing. Yeah, look, we don't got nothing bro. He look you can I don't wanna see a gang. I don't wanna see you because that's not what we are. Yeah, we, we wouldn't know nothing. So, so, so your homie was just did that. What? So your big homie, no, no, look, look, no, the only, only reason, the reason it got like that is because we, no, no, we don't look, bro, I understand what you're saying.

[00:26:48] Brian: OK, Kaighla, can you help us make sense of what we're hearing there? Yeah,
[00:26:52] Kaighla White: um, you know, I, I listened to those 911 calls. We filed a FOIA actually for the 911 calls, and we had to do a little hunting, uh, because unlike other places in Illinois, Edgar County does not have a centralized system. So when someone calls 911, it goes straight to 911 Edgar County 911 and then they have to actually relay in order to dispatch any, you know, local police um from different cities in in the county so we had to kind of hunt and uh listening to those 911 calls was um very disturbing for me to listen to, um. Especially in conjunction with the interview that we did with Jalil a couple of days after the events. He actually called us, I think two nights after it happened to tell us what happened before we actually interviewed him a couple of days later. And what we're hearing is you can kind of hear in the background there's some arguing going on and you hear Jalil trying to basically explain where he is and what's going on. They're trying to kill us, you know, um, he says where they are. The 911 dispatcher clearly asks, it sounds like she didn't understand what he was saying about where they were, but we know, like Kirk said from the CADlogs that we also sent in a FOIA request for that they knew precisely, almost down to the meter where Jalil and his cousins were, and yet they still spent 3 solid minutes on 3 different phone calls asking them not only where are you, how do we get there, arguing with them about how somebody would get there. And at one point in another 911 call, I'm not sure if you're going to clip that one as well, but she openly says, I need you to stay where you are, you're running around everywhere out there, indicating that they knew precisely where Jones and his cousins were during this entire thing. So at the end of the call, you hear Jones saying we're not on anything, we don't have anything, you know, trying to sort of Um, handle the situation calmly, peacefully, um, and, and you hear Jesse Coleman, so not the one with the gun, but the brother as far as I understand, um, basically saying, OK, so things are, are, are getting like this because we called you the N word, and you hear Jones say, no, no, no, it's not like that, and then the the call cuts off.

[00:29:09] Brian Mackey: Well, for the sake of time, I'm not gonna play another clip uh in our conversation today. But, um, Kirk, let me come back to you. Can you just put this episode in the broader context? I mean, you talked about what happened, what was it 16 years ago. What do you, what do you make when you start looking through all this information? What do you make of it?
[00:29:27] Kirk Allen: Well, I think it, it basically comes down to what we highlighted 16 years ago. our Edgar County 911 system operates under the purview of the sheriff's office. It's not an independent emergency telephone system board running it like most counties, and the sheriff is responsible for the dispatchers under their union contract, and this has been an ongoing problem in emergency services in this county, like I said, for 16 years, probably longer than When I even first identified it, and it's a training issue. Um, you know, I spent a career in the service. I've, I've spent over 20 years volunteering here locally. And it's an ongoing battle when it comes to dispatch. and when you listen to these calls, the first thing that comes across to me as a fire chief is the attitude. There was a distinctive attitude, and it wasn't to serve. It was an attitude of, you know, I was, I'm busy. Um, I'm sorry, but look at your screen. you'll be able to tell where the person is. and when you say calm down, you're walking all over the place. Well, that's because you can see where they're at on the CAD screen. Uh, we didn't need to have, you know, this back and forth dialogue. We needed to have emergency services dispatched to the scene, and I have not read the actual dispatch report yet from the city, but I understand it was relayed that it was a domestic. Well, there's a big difference between a domestic and a potential shooting or, you know, you can hear gunfire on one of the calls and you didn't see the urgency, and it, it does, it comes back to training and we have a sheriff that's a lame duck sheriff. He's He's vacant most of the days. He's never around and it's been that way for years and fortunately, he's going to be leaving and we'll, we'll have some new leadership in here and hopefully this will get fixed. I know the 911 board is working in that direction. I went to their last meeting and these two dispatchers, my understanding, there was supposed to be a hearing with their union. Um, I'm going to assume for the attempt to terminate them. Uh, but you know how union contracts are. Sometimes that's pretty tough to do, but, uh, they've, they do know they've got to do some better training and oversight on this. But right now, this falls in the lap of the sheriff. He's not doing his job.

[00:31:43] Brian Mackey: Just, uh, we're almost out of time. Kaighla, just briefly, maybe a couple of sentences. Can you talk about how the Paris community has reacted to this attack, this episode?
[00:31:52] Kaighla: Yeah, absolutely. So at that first hearing, the one that Jaleel was at. There were a number of residents um in attendance there to offer their support to let him know that not everyone in Paris is like this. Yes, there's racism, there's racism everywhere, but most of the people that we have interacted with and we've seen comments on our Facebook pages and posts are very supportive of Jalil and many people also comment on how the Coleman brothers apparently have a reputation um for for being problematic in the area.

[00:32:30] Reginald Hardwick: That was Kaighla White, founder, executive director and editor in chief for the Vermillion Times, and Kirk Allen, founder and reporter with Edgar County Watchdogs. They investigated the 911 calls after Danville Alderman Jaleel Jones and his two cousins were confronted by three white men armed with a shotgun and racial taunts. This all happened during a fishing trip in Paris in early April. 

Coming up, a new exhibit at the university YMCA in Champaign highlights photographs of local black leaders. We'll take you inside Champaign County's only 24-hour year-round emergency childcare facility, and a large outdoor garden on Chicago's South Side is bringing the community together in more ways than one. Stay with dialogue. We're back after this break.