The News-Messenger from Fremont, Ohio • Page A6

NATION The News-Messenger, Fremont, Ohio, Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Lawyer: Jena Six teen shot himself out of despair isiiiSS-i'- just felt that the whole year had been wasted and that he had worked all of that time for nothing," said Louis Scott, who represented Bell in the reading from a police report. Bell and the other members of the "Jena Six" once faced attempted murder charges in the beating at Jena High School, in north central Louisiana's Lasalle Parish. The charges for all the defendants were eventually reduced. But the severity of the original charges brought widespread criticism and eventually led more than 20,000 people to converge in September 2007 on the tiny town of Jena for a major civil rights march. After being sentenced to 18 months following his guilty plea to juvenile charges, Bell moved from Jena to Monroe, where he was in foster care He was released from state supervision on Dec.

4, said Bill Furlow, a spokesman for Reed Walters, the district attorney for LaSalle Parish. A football star at Jena High until the Barker beating, Bell had hoped to play for Monroe's Carroll High School, where he is on track to graduate in the spring. But the Louisiana High School Athletic Association wouldn't grant him a fifth year of eligibility to play. Bell had spent 10 months in prison awaiting trial after his 2006 arrest in the beating case. "He had kept his grades up and he had worked out the whole year even though he couldn't play.

He had dealt with the fact that the state athletic association would not let him play high school ball," Bell's lawyer, Louis Scott said Tuesday. It was unclear whether his dreams of a college football ca reer were realistic. According to Scott, family members believed Bell was having encouraging discussions with the University of Louisiana-Monroe. The school's director of football operations, Peter Martin, said in an e-mail that the school had not evaluated Bell as a prospective student-athlete and would not speculate on his potential at the college level. Police said Bell's Christmas Eve arrest came after he allegedly tried to steal several shirts and a pair of jeans from a department store and fled when a security guard and off-duty police officer tried to detain him.

After they found him hiding under a car, Bell "swung his arms wildly" and one of his elbows struck the security guard with a glancing blow, according to a police report. He was freed on $1,300 bond. Scott said he believed the arrest likely resulted from a misunderstanding. "I would be very surprised if he was shoplifting," Scott said. "I had seen him working out every day even though he knew he wasn't going to be able to play high school football." Monday's shooting was reported at 7:40 p.m.

According to the police report, Bell was staying at his grandmother's home and his mother was visiting at the time. Melissa Bell told police she and Simmons heard a gunshot coming from Mychal's room. They found him on his bed, wounded in the chest. It was not clear Tuesday who owned the gun. By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press NEW ORLEANS One of the central figures in the 2007 Jena Six civil rights case never gave up pursuing his football career, even after his well-publicized run-ins with the law.

Mychal Bell, an 18-year-old high school running back, clung to the hope that he could earn a college football scholarship. Then came another legal scrape this Christmas Eve. After news broke of his arrest on a shoplifting charge, Bell shot himself in the chest Monday with a handgun. He remained hospitalized Tuesday but police said his chest wound was not life-threatening. "When it was broadcast that he was charged with shoplifting he BELL case where Bell and five other black teenagers were charged in the 2006 beating of a white classmate.

Bell's grandmother, Rosie Simmons, and mother, Melissa Bell, told police that "Mychal had made comments over the past two days that, because of the current media attention he had because of the shoplifting arrest, he didn't feel like he could live anymore," Monroe Police Lt. Jeff Harris said, Kennedy's 'you knows' become political fodder mw ffi Caroline By JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press NEW YORK If Caroline Kennedy had, you know, only known. Tracking the would-be New York senator's verbal tics has become a political parlor game in the days since she gave her first round of in-depth interviews, even spawning a hip-hop-style mash-up online blending her "you knows" with President-elect Barack Obama's "uhs." Such conversational fillers are, of course, as common as, like, speech itself. But the buzz about Kennedy's "you knows" illustrates how problematic a few extraneous syllables can be for a public figure, especially in an era when today's verbal foible is tomorrow's viral video. "It really did a huge disservice to her," said communications training coach Matt Eventoff, a partner in Princeton Public Speaking in Princeton, N.J.

Rather than focusing on Kennedy's views, he said, "people are going to spend time deconstructing the 'you Deconstruct they have, on newsprint, blogs and YouTube, where the "Kennedy Obama UmYouKnow Remix" can be found alongside "The More You Know: Caroline Kennedy." The latter counts with a buzzer wm4 Joseph Kennedy, her cousin, both have been dubbed the "Wizard of a Boston radio host has held contests in which callers would count the number of "uhs" in a clip of the senator speaking. Former presidential candidate and ex-Sen. Bob Dole was noted for his "whatevers," former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich for his use of "obviously." More recently, GOP presidential candidate John McCain's "my friends" became a staple of the campaign trail.

Such interjections often arise out of nervousness or a need to fill a bit of time while gathering thoughts, speech experts say. The tics often go unnoticed by both speaker and listener up to a point. In informal research, speaking coach Dennis Becker said he and others found that people listening to business presentations shrugged off two to three "urns," "uhs" and the like per minute. But they started getting irked once the number crept up to five to seven. Besides being distracting, these little locutions can make a speaker seem ill-prepared or unsure of his or her point.

"It becomes a big detriment to the speaker's credibility," said Becker, co-founder of The Speech Improvement Company 30 "you knows" in 147 seconds of excerpts from an interview with The Associated Press. Bloggers have torn into President John F. Kennedy's Harvard- and Columbia-educated daughter for such remarks as: "You know, I think, really, um, this is sort of a unique moment, both in our, you know, in our country's history and in, you know, my own life, and, um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges." The "you knows" have punctuated a rocky media rollout for the Democratic scion, who emerged from a lifetime of closely guarded privacy to seek appointment to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat. If Clinton is confirmed as Obama's secretary of state, as expected, Democratic Gov.

David Pater-son will choose her successor. Kennedy, 51, has never held public office and has faced questions about her preparedness for the Senate. She has pointed to her experience as a lawyer, education advocate and author of books on constitutional law and other subjects, as well as her family's long history of public service. A Kennedy spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday but told the Daily News on Monday: "Caroline has acknowledged Lisa PooleAssociated Press SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY, left, and Caroline Kennedy, president of the Kennedy Library Foundation, pass each other during a ceremony awarding the Profile in Courage Awards at the John F.

Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Kennedy has told New York Gov. David Paterson she wants to be the state's next Senator, becoming the highest-profile person to actively lobby for the seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kennedy has told the Democratic governor she wants the job should Clinton be confirmed as secretary of state for Presidentelect Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the conversations between Kennedy and Paterson. that she hasn't mastered the art of the political sound bite, but if Gov.

Paterson appoints her, she'll fight her heart out to make sure New York families have their voices heard in Washing Mswm ton." Kennedy isn't alone even within her own family in leaning on a conversational crutch. Sen. Edward Kennedy, her uncle, and former Rep. We request Let Let the From cater based in Boston. Such verbal tics generally don't rise to the level of a speech disorder and can be corrected largely through simple awareness, said speech-language pathologist Deborah Adamczyk, the director of school services for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

It represents more than 130,000 speech-language pathologists and related specialists. For all those making fun of Kennedy's "you know" habit, other observers some in public life themselves say too much is being made of it. "Everybody, on some level or another, has some mannerism whether it's verbal or physical that they wish they didn't have," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democrat who noted she's not backing anyone for the potential Senate opening. "That alone shouldn't be something that becomes the focus of somebody's skill or ability." More than a half-dozen elected officials are vying for the post, including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and several members of Congress. Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

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