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Of all the young men in Jackson that Mayor Frank Melton has befriended and mentored over the years, Maurice Warner was one of the most special to him. Melton met Warner when he was new to Jackson. He was CEO of WLBT and the young man was 14, Melton said in a series of 2006 interviews with the Jackson Free Press. “I never have lost contact with Maurice, but we could go six or seven months without me seeing or talking to Maurice, but it’s the kind of thing where I could pick up the phone and call Maurice, and he would come and see me, or I would go and see him,” Melton said in a 2006 interview in City Hall.
Over the ensuing 25 years, Melton has stayed close to Warner, even embracing him in public when running into the younger man on Pleasant Avenue in the Wood Street area. Warner had long lived in that area near his extended familyhe is the father of 15 children and grandfather to 11on the same blocks where neighborhood residents say that Warner has long sold drugs, and perhaps even directed a drug trade with younger dealers, at least some of them in their teens…