The Missisippi NAACP is asking for a federal investigation after they say a black student at Stone County High School had a noose thrown around his neck and “pulled tight.”

According to Biloxi CBS affiliate, WLOX, the NAACP says the students are not being expelled, and school administrators did not report the incident. ABC News/ESPN is reporting that the student was a football player, and the incident involved his teammates in the locker room.

“They failed to protect this student throughout this ordeal. Allowing students to commit blatant hate crimes without severe consequences, sends a message to students that their safety and well being are not valuable enough to be protected,” reads an NAACP news release.

Derrick Johnson, the NAACP president for Mississippi says the student’s mother was “discouraged” from filing charges, due to one of the alleged attackers’ father being a law enforcement officer. According to Johnson, there could have been as many as four attackers in the incident and that a sheriff’s investigator said the victim’s parents could be “faced with intimidation” if they pursued charges. He says while the victim was not physically harmed, the incident left him “terrified.”

The investigator in question denies these claims, and says that he just wanted the mother to know “her child would be heavily scrutinized and possibly bullied on social media,” and that parents in these situations in the past felt “their children were ‘worse off’ than before the incident was reported.”

The school’s football coach, John Feaster, told ESPN that he reported the incident to school administrators as swiftly as possible, and that the student involved in the incident is no longer with the team. Feaster says only one student was involved, disputing the claim that it was a group of students.

The sheriff’s offices says the investigation of their own is moving forward. The principal would not comment on the investigation to WLOX, and the school superintendent did not respond to requests for comment.

Stay connected to all things Black Twitter, news and the best content on the Internet by signing up for Blavity’s newsletter.

Stone County high school

Get relevant content delivered to you once a week