Police: S.C. students charged with hanging noose at school
The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. --
Two high school students - one black and the other white - hung a noose from a tree at school, apparently angry at a group of students who took a football from them, authorities said Thursday.

The two A.C. Flora High School students, both 16, were charged with disturbing a school and released to their parents, police said. Their identities were not being released because of their age.

The two teenagers were playing football Monday when another group of students came by and took the ball, Richland County sheriff's spokesman Chris Cowan said. The students argued and on Thursday, the boys hung a noose from a tree near where the group of students were sitting at lunchtime.

"What they did disturbed the operation of the school," said Cowan, explaining the action did not meet the criteria for a hate crime. "We believe they did a stupid thing."

The incident does not reflect any kind of racial problems at A.C. Flora High, Richland School District 1 Superintendent Allen Coles said.

"While these two students may have thought that this was a joke, the school and the district take this incident very seriously and the students will be disciplined as such," Coles said in a statement issued Thursday.

In Louisiana, six black teens, known as the Jena Six, were charged with attempted second-degree murder for allegedly beating a white student bloody and unconscious following months of mounting racial tensions after three white students hung nooses from a tree on school grounds. The charges have since been reduced for four of them.

Another student was booked as a juvenile on sealed charges, and an appeals court threw out a conviction for a sixth student, saying he was 16 at the time and should not have been tried as an adult.