CHATHAM DEPUTY'S ATTORNEY WANTS WITNESS TO TALK

PITTSBORO - The attorney for former Chatham County sheriff's deputy Dan
Phillips plans to file a motion to compel testimony of at least one
potential witness in a lawsuit filed by Phillips earlier this year.

Chapel Hill-based attorney Alan McSurely filed the lawsuit on
Phillips' behalf in early February after Phillips was fired from the
sheriff's department in mid-January.

The lawsuit names Sheriff Ike Gray as defendant and alleges that
Phillips was fired after he was asked to take a lie detector test
about the origins of a tape containing racist statements about black
students allegedly made by former Chatham Central High School
Principal William "Buddy" Fowler. Phillips, who worked as a student
resource officer at the school for several months in 1999 and 2000,
states in the lawsuit that he told members of the sheriff's department
only if the person who alleged that Phillips made the tape would also
take a lie detector test. Phillips has denied making the tape.

According to the suit, Phillips was also not allowed to report racial
incidents that he witnessed at the school to U.S. Department of
Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) investigators. The OCR
investigators were in Chatham County looking into a complaint filed by
members of Correcting Racial Injustice for Success In Society (CRISIS)
against the school system in mid-1999.

The complaint alleged, among other things, that the district was
biased against minorities in discipline matters and that the district
had a low number of minority faculty members. The school system
received OCR's recommendations last December, and was not penalized.

CRISIS petitioned in February to reopen the OCR case after Phillips'
lawsuit was filed.

Soon after Phillips filed the lawsuit, Gray's attorney filed a motion
to move the case to a federal court in Greensboro. McSurely filed an
opposing motion on April 4 to keep the case in Chatham County Superior
Court.

On Sept. 27, a federal judge ruled that the case should be heard in
Chatham County.

McSurely said depositions have been taken from Chatham County
Superintendent Larry Mabe, Board of Education Chairman Jack Wilkie,
Chief Deputy Randy Keck, Chatham County Commissioner Rick Givens,
Phillips and Gray regarding the suit.

McSurely said he decided to file a motion to compel testimony after at
least one person being deposed was instructed by an attorney not to
answer some questions.

"There are two themes in this case. First, that tape of the principal
and the missing marijuana from the sheriff's department," McSurely
said. "We are saying that Phillips was unfairly targeted in both of
these cases, even though he played only a tangential role in both of
these very volatile, political issues, because he upset various
political figures in the county."

The "missing marijuana" involves a drug bust near Siler City in 1999
that netted nearly 5,000 pounds of marijuana. The marijuana was stored
in a two-and-a-half ton army surplus truck at the sheriff's department
pending burial in a landfill. When deputies drove the truck to the
landfill in September, 2000, they discovered a large portion of the
marijuana was missing. The remaining marijuana was buried, but it
turned up missing several weeks later.

The FBI has investigating the case and a spokesman has stated that
they do have suspects in the case.

The motion to compel testimony could be filed as early as next week,
McSurely said.