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CNN Saturday Morning News
Students in Pike County Accused of Assaulting Basketball Player
Aired March 02, 2002 - 07:27 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Pike County in eastern Kentucky is part of the Appalachian coal belt. It's tough, remote, rural, and it's where the Hatfields and McCoys feuded. Today another feud is unfolding, though, and it's being played out in a high school basketball court.
CNN's Gary Tuchman reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains in eastern Kentucky sits Pike County. It's an area with rugged beauty, an area where an abundance of coal has employed families for generations, in a state where basketball rules.
And that's why what happened to this high school basketball player is the talk of the town.
FORREST DALE JOHNSON, PRINCIPAL, SHELBY VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL: We're being judged on misconceptions about what happened, and not all the facts were in.
TUCHMAN: Forrest Dale Johnson is the principal of Shelby Valley High School. Six students from his school were arrested and charged with assaulting Millard High School's star basketball player, Jared Atkins.
JARED ATKINS, BASKETBALL PLAYER, MILLARD HIGH SCHOOL: They had to go in and put steel plates in my hand.
TUCHMAN: And that was two days before Atkins' team was to play in the semifinals of the district playoffs.
His athletic future is now in doubt, and people in this country, where the Hatfield-McCoy feud originated in the 1860s, are now talking about this feud.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did they beat him up? You know, because he's their main player, you know, I mean, he's the one that does it all for them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So he wouldn't be able to play in the game, so basically that they would have another chance or a better chance in winning.
TUCHMAN: The situation reminded many of 1994's Tonya Harding incident, when the figure skater pleaded guilty in connection with the assault of rival Nancy Kerrigan. Even the national and international news media picked up the story.
The only problem, the conspiracy theory doesn't appear to be true. This is Jared Atkins' own principal.
RALPH KILGORE, PRINCIPAL, MILLARD HIGH SCHOOL: And we cannot find any tie-in at all to the athletic program or to the basketball program at Shelby Valley.
JOHNSON: To the best of our ability to find out, it's probably -- went back to maybe a girlfriend, an old girlfriend.
TUCHMAN: Atkins, who was a nominee to the Kentucky All State team, won't say that, but says no basketball players from Shelby Valley were in on the fight, and adds...
ATKINS: Some people is going around saying that I thought that the Shelby Valley basketball players, that they made -- you know, that I thought that they made those boys do that to me. But that's not true. I never did, not for one, think that.
TUCHMAN (on camera): So Millard High School played in the district semifinals Wednesday night without the injured Jared Atkins, and it turned into a worst-case scenario for the Millard Mustangs. They lost. Their season is now over.
If they had won, they would have played in the championship game against Shelby Valley.
(voice-over): Students at Shelby Valley are angry so many people believed the conspiracy story.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Our team is respectable, and we have more morals and values than that.
TUCHMAN: And as for Jared Atkins, his injury isn't his only indignity. He has now been informed by authorities that assault charges are being filed against him too.
Gary Tuchman, CNN, Pikeville, Kentucky.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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