Parents: Cops’ story of son’s suicide sounds shaky. The parents of a Mississippi high school star athlete aren’t buying the cops’ story that their son shot himself to death during a traffic stop. They want the NAACP to initiate an independent autopsy to determine how Billey Joe Johnson, of George County High School. The officer who stopped the 17-year-old running back said that he had gone back to his patrol car to do a license check and heard a gunshot. He said he then saw Johnson fall out of the driver side of the car with the shotgun on top of him. “The NAACP, along with the family, have determined that Billey Joe Johnson did not commit suicide,” Curley Clark, the vice president of the NAACP’s Mississippi chapter told The Mississippi Press. “At this point, nothing is concrete until the results of the autopsies have been made known.” Clark said the civil rights group will have the results of a second autopsy done this week.” This incident will not be swept under the rug,” Clark told WLOX. “We are going to make sure all the facts are brought out. We are going to provide the proper assistance necessary to sure no civil rights were violated.” Johnson’s brother, Eddie, said that Billey loved to hunt and would sometimes go early in the morning before heading to school.  That, he said, would explain why his brother had a shotgun in his car. Billy rushed for more than 4,000 yards in his high school career and had scholarship offers from Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State and Oregon.

A Harlem athlete plunges to his death

. A high school athlete fell to his death in west Harlem Monday when he tried to jump from one roof to another during an egg-tossing prank, reports The New York Daily News. David Diaz, 19, and a few friends were hurling eggs off a roof on W. 135th St. when some of their targets below got angry. Diaz, a senior at Westside High School and a proud member of the Harlem Jaguars community football team, had one arm in a sling from a sports injury when he apparently tried to escape by bolting over a brick wall that he thought separated one building from another, friends and police source said. Instead, Diaz fell six stories to his death in the courtyard below shortly before 1:30 a.m. Monday. “He hit an air conditioner and then the [ground] floor. But he was alive. This kid was so strong he kept trying to sit up,” said David Ruiz, 48, president of the tenant association at 612 W. 135th St. Diaz died several hours later at St. Luke’s Hospital, relatives said. “He was my baby. He was a good boy. They were just fooling around,” said the teen’s mother, Rosa Diaz, outside the family’s Bronx apartment. “This shouldn’t have happened … This is terrible. I want to find peace.”

Men’s basketball team could take top spot in Beijing Sunday. The “Redeem Team” could finally live up to its nickname on Sunday. But first, the men’s basketball players representing the United States at the Beijing Olympics will have to take down defending champion Argentina tonight. Argentina beat the USA in the 2004 Olympics semi-finals. If the men win against the South American ballers tonight, they’ll move on to Sunday’s gold-medal match-up. It would be the team’s first gold in international competition since 2000.

Two of Dallas’ pro athletes try their hand at beach volleyball.
Brandon Bass, Adam “Pacman” Jones compete for charity. Dallas Mavericks forward Brandon Bass will team up with recent Dallas Cowboys recruit Adam “Pacman” Jones next month for a celebrity charity event. Bass and Jones will host the First Annual Celebrity Volleyball Beach Battle Sept. 13. Several other Mavericks will also compete in the tournament, which pairs a celebrity with four fans on each team. The cost of all that fun in the sun? A meager $2,500 per team, with proceeds going to the Brandon Bass Reach Back Foundation.