CLARKSDALE – After receiving anonymous tips and conducting undercover investigations, a freshman student at Coahoma Community College was arrested Tuesday and charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of a firearm on a college campus.
The Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department said they executed a search warrant on the dorm room of Hardest Vaughn Jr., a 19-year-old native of Southaven, and found several items including one handgun with an extended magazine, one semi-automatic rifle with a 30-round magazine, and assorted manufacturing materials to produce baked chocolate cookies and brownies laced with THC.
George Brown of the Coahoma Community College Department of Safety said in a news release sent to Mississippi Today that the department, in conjunction with the Coahoma County Sheriff’s Office, is continuing to investigate the incident.
“The safety, security, and well-being of our students, faculty, staff, and visitors is Coahoma Community College’s top priority,” the community college’s communications department said in a statement. “The institution … has a zero-tolerance policy as it relates to drugs and weapons on its campus and satellite locations.”
Vaughn was taken into custody and is currently being held in the Coahoma County jail.
In a Facebook video of the press conference, Coahoma County Chief Deputy Leon Williams, who oversees the narcotics division, said the narcotics department began investigating about two weeks ago. The Department started tracking Vaughn through social media and decided to execute the search warrant.
“This is my first time experiencing this, and I’ve been in law enforcement since 1982,” Williams said at the media conference. “Our main concern is making sure the community is educated.”
Although no violence occurred, Coahoma County Sheriff Charles Jones said making the public aware of such instances is a priority for them, he said.
“We’re trying to be proactive and we don’t want the public to think it doesn’t happen on school campuses,” Jones said. “It could’ve been a disaster and we want to make sure the public is aware.”
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.