Two black teens face racist bullying in Yerington — and they say no one is stopping it

Taylissa Marriott started this school year painting on the sidewalk outside Yerington High School.

With a brush dripping purple paint, the freshman gave a fresh coat to a large lion paw, the school’s mascot.

Taylissa, 14, was eager to be part of the painting paws tradition at a school where she would run cross country, play basketball and serve on the student council, a seat she earned through an essay she wrote in middle school.

But three months into what Taylissa imagined was going to be an idyllic start to high school, she broke down and cried.

Someone, again, had called her a racial slur. This time, Taylissa said, it was within earshot of a teacher, who stood silent in the hallway.

Crying is rare for the usually strong teen, who at nearly 6 feet tall towers over most of her peers.

She and her sister are two of only a few black students in the high school of just under 400 students in rural Nevada, 90 minutes from Reno.

The word stung, just as it had the first time she heard it as a little girl at a public swimming pool. A boy pointed at her and said it.

Taylissa’s mom, Nancy Marriott-Tolliver and stepfather, Charles Tolliver, say Taylissa and her 14-year-old stepsister Jayla Tolliver have been the victims of repeated racial bullying at school. They have pleaded for district administrators and the police to take action but say nothing has happened.

Students have blocked doorways and barred doors shut while spouting hateful speech, the parents say. At a football game, a student leaned over to a friend sitting next to Jayla and said, loud enough for all to hear, “I thought you didn’t like --" and there, again, was that word.

Those cruel words by upperclassmen at school became terrifying on Oct. 8.

Photos of a Lyon County sheriff’s deputy's son holding a gun and wearing a belt with knives were posted on social media. Superimposed over the photos were the words “The red neck god of all gods ... we bout to go (racial slur) huntin,” and “Watch out (racial slur).”

It is unclear whether the deputy's son or friends wrote the comments, but it was enough to scare Taylissa and Jayla as dozens of classmates began forwarding the girls the posts.

Taylissa and Jayla stayed home from school the next day. They filled out police reports. They worried when they went outside.

The posts quickly became the talk of the town, but Yerington Mayor George Dini dismissed them as the act of teenagers who meant no harm and were ignorantly unaware of what they were doing.

“This is a case of some kids acting badly,” Dini said.

Yerington Police Chief Darren Wagner told the RGJ that, as much as he didn’t like what was said, the comments were protected as freedom of speech. He did not open an investigation into the posts.

“I wouldn’t have investigated if a black child posted a picture saying he was going cracker hunting,” Wagner said.

Yerington High School principal Duane Mattice said the school is doing everything it can to address bullying. He said the school prides itself on creating a safe and healthy learning environment.

The school is having a unity day in December to celebrate all cultures and has recently started a committee of people of different backgrounds to improve respect for all races.

"It was needed," he said.

Some residents say a reporter asking questions in town has stirred things up again after the issue was quieting down.

“We are addressing those who have done something, but now other kids have gotten involved and it’s hard to control that,” said Lyon County Superintendent Wayne Workman. “We are having a hard time controlling what others may be saying.”

Taylissa and Jayla’s parents say their daughters still don’t feel safe.

On one of the occasions Charles Tolliver went to the school to try to meet with administrators, a student standing with a group of girls said to him, "You don't even know the definition of (racial slur)."

"If you ever call my daughters (racial slurs) ..." he said before stopping himself.

After repeated requests for help had been ignored, Tolliver said, he called the principal a bigot.

School officials have accused Tolliver of being hostile and aggressive. He was given a trespass warning and is only allowed on school grounds with prior permission.

"... you interacted with me as well as Yerington High School students in a hostile, aggressive and threatening manner, resulting in the contacting of law enforcement," the trespass notice from Principal Mattice said.

Taylissa and Jayla said they are left wondering what may happen next.

“I was scared because it was about going hunting,” Taylissa said of the post. “I mean, it’s not just about not being wanted here anymore.”

“It just has gotten out of hand,” Jayla said. “When I saw the post I felt like we weren’t wanted at school and it wasn’t safe for us to go there because something was going to happen to us.”

“We felt (the posts were) proof of some of what my girls were experiencing at school,” said the girls' mom, Marriott-Tolliver. “Now it has become a threat, a serious one.”

She called the police and she and her daughters filled out statements.

“We thought there was an investigation," Marriott-Tolliver said, but when they went to the police station to get copies of their statements, there were no reports.

Wagner, the Yerington police chief, said he refused to investigate the accusations of what the family perceived as death threats because he said the comments, including about hunting, are nothing more than freedom of speech.

“It’s awful what was said, and I don’t condone it, but I can’t stop people from what they are thinking,” Wagner said.

Wagner told the RGJ that the statements the family filled out were shredded by a police officer new to the Yerington Police Department. He admitted this was likely a violation of law but the department is taking statements now after calls from the RGJ.

“I am sick of everyone saying we did something wrong,” he said. “We can’t police bad behavior.”

Lyon County Sheriff Al McNeil confirmed the boy pictured was the son of one of his deputies.

He said the post appears to be a foolish mistake by young people unaware of the ramifications of what they were posting, and it doesn't constitute a credible threat.

But McNeil said he believed there still should have been an investigation.

He said because Yerington Police Department has jurisdiction over the school and because the social media photos involved the son of one of his officers, he was not doing an investigation.

Wagner said he didn't interview the students who made the posts or the boy posing in the picture.

“This is just a First Amendment issue,” Wagner said. “I did not do an investigation because there is nothing to investigate."

He said the fact that the boy in the picture is a deputy's son did not influence his decision not to investigate the incident.

“If I were to do an investigation just because of the law enforcement connection, that seems biased, too.”

Workman, superintendent over Yerington High School, said the district has done what it could regarding events that happened outside of school, including the social media posts. The school informed Yerington police of the incident.

Nevada law requires a school to create and provide a safe and respectful environment for all students that is free of bullying, and that an investigation into an allegation of bullying be started on the day it is reported.

School officials say they can’t comment on what actions, if any, were taken against the students involved in the post.

School districts frequently deal with threats on social media.

The Washoe County School District recently dealt with a threat that a student posted to his social media account in which he said he wanted to commit a school shooting.

In that case, the student was arrested and faces charges under two Nevada laws that involve making threats or conveying false information and a law that prohibits assaulting a pupil or school employee or interfering with persons peaceably assembled within a school.

Wagner said that case was different because the juvenile directly referenced a school.

Washoe County School District Police Chief Jason Trevino said his office investigates all threats, even if the investigation proves that no charges should be filed after talking to all involved.

Trevino said school police are meticulous about making sure a threat isn’t real and checking to see whether the person who posted something has intent or the means to carry out the action.

He said his office would investigate a threat made by a student who said something about hunting people.

Mayor Dini supports Wagner’s decision not to do an investigation.

“There’s really nothing here,” he said.

Dini also runs Dini’s Lucky Club, which prides itself on being the oldest family-run casino in the state. It’s not unusual for city business to take place in a banquet room of the 84-year-old place on the main drag in Yerington.

Dini took over the club from his late father, Joe Dini, a former Assembly speaker who served eight terms in the Nevada Legislature.

Yerington has a population of just above 3,000 people, according to census information. Of that, several hundred are identified as American Indian and Hispanic. Fewer than 20 are black.

Only 57 black students attend school in all of Lyon County, a district of more than 8,300 students across 18 schools in four Nevada towns, including Yerington, according to the Nevada Department of Education.

Dini’s grandchildren frequent the casino’s coffee shop after school. It’s the kind of small-town tradition that makes living in rural Nevada unlike anywhere else, Dini said.

“The grandkids and their friends come in for the same thing we did as kids as soon as school gets out,” he said. “Cokes and french fries.”

But for Taylissa and Jayla, it’s been a different small town experience.

The girls became sisters after Taylissa's mother and Jayla's father married earlier this year and moved the family to Yerington. For Taylissa, it was moving back to the town she left as a little girl.

They are now a family of eight sisters, including four younger siblings. Three attend Yerington Elementary School.

The family said moving to a town and experiencing such bigotry has been hard.

“I just feel sick,” Jayla said. “You shouldn’t judge someone from their skin color. We are all the same.”

“People say they don’t like our kind,” Taylissa said. “It’s not stopping. It’s 2017. You would think racial stuff would be over, but it’s not.”

When you walk into Yerington High School, there is a wall of notable graduates.

According to Laurie Thom, chairman of the Yerington Paiute Tribe, not one is a person of color.

Thom, who has been chairman of two tribes and is a graduate of Yerington High School, isn’t on the wall, either.

“I think if the school wants to change, that is one place it can now, today,” she said of minority students having the right to see students who look like themselves on the wall.

The Yerington Paiute Tribe reservation was established in 1916. More than 40 students from the reservation attend Yerington High School.

Thom has tried over the years to work with the school over allegations that members of the tribe were discriminated against by school officials. She said allegations include different treatment for students who are not white.

“I think times have changed and our political leaders have made some of this racial bullying OK again,” she said.

She said she and tribal leaders think racism problems have increased in recent months.

“I don’t think ignoring it is making it go away,” she said.

Thom and tribal leaders also discussed the social media posts that have scared Taylissa and Jayla.

“We are very concerned about what is being said,” she said. “We need to work together more than ever.”

Principal Mattice said Thom's suggestion to include graduates of different backgrounds on the school's notable graduate wall is a good one.

"Last year we nominated someone of Italian descent," he said. "Does that count?"

He said the school is trying to be more inclusive of all people and recently started a Special Olympics basketball team. He said the school honored a Hispanic girl as a student of the week, and some of the parent volunteers who the school is now recognizing in a new program have been minorities.

The Reno/Sparks chapter of the NAACP is doing its own investigation into the allegations of threats and bullying in Yerington.

The organization said it disagrees with the Yerington police chief’s view that a threat against a group of people is protected as free speech.

“You can say you don’t like (a certain race) but when you say you are going to kill them, that is different,” said Lonnie Feemster, the past president of the local chapter and now the vice president overseeing NAACP programs in Nevada, Utah and Idaho.

UNLV Law professor Ian Bartrum said a case like this isn’t automatically protected speech.

“If the intent is to scare or intimidate people, that wouldn’t necessarily be protected under the First Amendment,” he said.

He said it would be hard to determine that without an investigation to prove whether the threat was made to intimidate someone.

“There are a number of statutes that criminalize threats,” he said.

Amy Rose, legal director for the ACLU of Nevada, said for free speech to rise to the level of crime it must hit the threshold of being a credible threat or incite imminent unlawful behavior.

"Just writing on Facebook 'I'm mad and I really want to murder you right now,' wouldn't necessarily be a crime," Rose said. "If I were to say, 'Here's my plan to commit this crime against you,' then that certainly would be."

"Every situation is different and very fact-intensive, depending on what the content is and what the situation is," Rose said.

Making an offensive or racist statement is not criminal, Rose said.

Feemster said he is concerned that the Yerington Police Department would deliberately destroy records and not launch an investigation.

“I’m in touch with the Nevada Attorney General’s office,” Feemster said. He said he had the family fill out a complaint about destroyed police records.

The Attorney General’s office does not comment on or confirm investigations, but Taylissa and Jayla’s parents showed the RGJ a response email from an investigator who confirmed the complaint was submitted.

Recently, Taylissa texted her mother from school

“I just want to go home,” she wrote.

She said a boy in class said, “If you weren’t (racial slurs) I think people would like you.”

Her mom told her she had to stay at school. “Go report it,” she replied.

“I just don’t know who to tell because everybody is tired of it,” Taylissa wrote back.

Mattice, the Yerington principal, said what has transpired at the school over the last few months has been hard on everyone.

"Despite recent events, if you talked to people at our school they would say it is a very safe and respectful place," Mattice said.

But Marriott-Tolliver said she feels differently. The trespass warning from the school district still is in effect on her husband.

“No one is protecting my girls at school," she said.

Taylissa said her essay in middle school that earned her spot on the student council this year was about being eager to start high school.

“I’m going to try and get more involved and let other kids know everyone is welcome," she wrote.

But now, she said, she’s not sure she ever will.

“The thing I worry about is I have little sisters," Taylissa said. "Is this going to happen to them or is it all going to change?”