A contract employee at SSC Service Solutions on the campus of West Texas A&M University has been fired after what has been called a racially charged incident.

In early August, an SSC contract employee hung a noose from the letter N in letters spelling out the word zone at the front of a threshold leading to another employee's desk. The name of both parties were withheld and the details of their individual race were not provided.

SSC is the contracted facility maintenance company for WTAMU.

"We are not able to comment, one, on incidents that are under investigation and two, we can't comment on another company's investigation," said Ann Underwood, WTAMU director of communication and marketing.

No charges have been filed in the incident with WTAMU Police Department.

"We became aware of the incident but we were told they would handle it through their HR," said Assistant Chief Robert Byrd of the university police department. "It was handled as a human resources event by the SSC company."

Catherine Merritt, SSC director of communications, said after a thorough investigation, the responsible party was terminated.

"It's unfortunate that in this day and age some people think this type of behavior is acceptable. We do not condone such conduct," she said.

Merritt said the company has held annual diversity inclusion training for many years and takes the matter seriously. A timeline of events was not provided.

"I cannot comment on the details of an HR investigation, that's private employee data," Merritt said.

"This is proof positive that racism runs very deep in the Texas panhandle," said Jeff Blackburn, attorney for the victim. "Any other community, in a more enlightened part of our state, would have dealt with this more immediately, instead what we got here was dithering."

Blackburn said he was sure the incident was racially motivated.

"This is as obvious and gross a Klan-level type racism as you find. I've seen it before in this area. This is not the first time," he said.

A lawsuit has not yet been filed and Blackburn said they were pursuing their options.