Swamp preserve to be named for slain Mississippi officer

Published 12:00 pm Saturday, May 12, 2018

GRENADA, Miss. (AP) — A swamp preserve will be named to memorialize a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics agent who died in a 2016 shootout.

The Greenwood Commonwealth reports that the Chakchiuma Swamp Natural Area near Grenada will become the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve.

Tartt, a Grenada native, died in 2016 as officers stormed a Tishomingo County house where a man was holding a woman and a 10-year-old girl hostage. He began working with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics in 2000 and was named the bureau’s agent of the year in 2011.

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The city of Grenada owns the 300-acre area and had been planning to cut down trees, but agreed to lease it to the Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp to preserve it. An anonymous donor asked that it be named for Tartt.