PARIS, Texas (AP) – In a gruesome case with powerful echoes of the dragging death of James Byrd a decade ago, a black man was killed underneath a pickup truck in East Texas and two white men have been charged with murder.

Black activists and the victim’s mother are calling last month’s killing of 24-year-old Brandon McClelland a racist attack, and investigators are looking into the possibility one of the defendants was a member of a white supremacist prison gang.

McClelland died after going with two white acquaintances on a late-night beer run across the state line to Oklahoma, investigators said. Authorities said he was run over and dragged as much as 70 feet beneath the truck. His torn-apart body was discovered along a bloodstained rural road on Sept. 16. His mother said pieces of his skull could still be found three days later.

Fraught relations

The case has raised racial tensions in Paris, a town of 26,000 with a history of fraught relations between blacks and whites. To some, it sounds like the Byrd case, in which a black man in the East Texas town of Jasper, about 200 miles south of Paris, was chained by the ankles to the back of a pickup truck by three white supremacists and dragged for three miles. Two of the killers are now on death row; the third is serving a life sentence.

Prosecutor Bill Harris said he has seen no evidence McClelland’s killing was racially motivated, but he said investigators are looking into whether Shannon Keith Finley, who has served time for killing a friend, was in a racist gang behind bars.

“You have a fringe element on many different sides of this issue saying truly outlandish things that have no basis in fact or evidence,” Harris said. He said he spoke to McClelland’s family, and “I don’t think they want his death to become a catalyst for a race war in Lamar County.”

Autopsy results are expected back next week, and investigators will look closely for marks on the body that would indicate whether McClelland was tied to the truck. If prosecutors determine the killing was motivated by racial prejudice, they will seek to increase the punishment if they win a conviction, the prosecutor said. Harris’ assurances have not calmed the small town. Community activist Brenda Cherry said authorities have not seriously considered the possibility this was a hate crime.

“There’s a problem in Paris, Texas,” she said. “I don’t see a difference in getting dragged behind a truck and getting dragged under a truck.”

A flier advertising a Saturday memorial service for McClelland said he was “the victim of a brutal and racist hate crime.” The New Black Panthers met with investigators and held a news conference at the courthouse promising to examine the killing.

“I truly feel that race played a part in it,” said the victim’s mother, Jacquline McClelland. “It is a racist town, and Paris has always been a racist town.”

The city is perhaps best known for its 70-foot Eiffel Tower replica topped by a giant red cowboy hat. Paris, which is 73 percent white and 22 percent black, was in the news last year after a black girl was sentenced to up to seven years in a juvenile prison hundreds of miles from her home for shoving a teacher’s aide at school, while a white girl was sentenced by the same judge to probation for burning down her parents’ house.

Just like the rest of U.S.

“Well, folks, Paris is just like the rest of the United States and we are not immune from horrible crimes,” Paris News managing editor Mary Madewell wrote in a column after McClelland’s death. “It is time this community wakes up to reality.”

According to court papers, Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley, both 27, told police they left the dry town to get beer in Oklahoma, and on the way back, the three men, all apparently drunk, argued about who was sober enough to drive. McClelland, an unmarried maintenance worker, decided to walk home, taking some beer with him, the men told police.

But Finley’s estranged wife and one of his friends said they had been told by the two defendants that Finley began to bump McClelland with the front of his truck until McClelland fell, and Finley drove over him.

, according to court papers. Crostley and Finley then allegedly drove to a car wash to clean off the blood.

Crostley and Finley are jailed on charges of murder and evidence-tampering. Finley’s attorney did not immediately return a message. There was no answer at the phone listing for Crostley’s lawyer.

As in many small towns, some of the players are connected. The district attorney, Gary Young, was once the court-appointed lawyer for Finley, who was charged with murder in 2003. Finley eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to four years.

In that same case, McClelland pleaded guilty to perjury for providing a false alibi for Finley. He was sentenced to five years’ probation but served some jail time when he violated its terms, Harris said.

“For the life of me, I cannot understand it,” McClelland’s mother said. “They didn’t have to run over and kill my baby. They could have brought him home.”

AP-ES-10-24-08 1611EDT