4 arrests made in connection with mass shooting that left 6 dead in Mississippi, FBI says
Three people were arrested for murder and a fourth for attempted murder in a weekend shooting that left six people dead and more than a dozen injured in a small Mississippi town, the FBI said Monday.
Teviyon L. Powell, 29, William Bryant, 29, and Morgan Lattimore, 25, were charged with capital murder, while Latoya A. Powell, 44, was charged with attempted murder in the mass shooting, a spokesman for the FBI’s Jackson field office said.
It was not immediately clear whether they had lawyers. The Associated Press left a voicemail with the Washington County public defender’s office asking if its attorneys represented the defendants.
The shooting, which occurred as people celebrated Homecoming weekend in downtown Leland shortly after a high school football game, was the deadliest of several shootings across Mississippi over the weekend. More shootings were reported Saturday at two Mississippi universities as those schools celebrated their homecoming weekends.
Authorities have not revealed a possible motive for Friday night’s shooting in Leland, but the FBI said the shooting appears to have been “sparked by a disagreement between multiple individuals.” The spokesperson said Monday evening, without providing further details, that “further arrests are being made” as the investigation continues into the shooting in rural northwest Delta.
Four of the victims died at the scene, as discarded shoes were left behind and blood stained the sidewalk of a downtown street the next day.
Witness Camish Hopkins described seeing people injured and bleeding and four people dead on the ground. “It was the most horrific scene I have ever seen,” Hopkins told the AP.
The Leland shooting was the 14th mass shooting in 2025, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass shooting database. The database tracks all homicides in the United States since 2006 in which four or more people were intentionally killed in a 24-hour period, without including any offenders.
Elsewhere, in the small town of Heidelberg, in the east of the state, the bodies of two people, including a pregnant woman, were found Friday evening on a high school campus. That shooting happened the same night Heidelberg High School played its homecoming football game, according to police and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves. Police did not say when exactly the shooting occurred or how far from the stadium they were.
An 18-year-old man was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and unlawful possession of a firearm on a school campus in the Heidelberg shooting, according to Jasper County jail records.
Heidelberg, a city of about 640 people, is about 85 miles (135 kilometers) southeast of the state capital of Jackson.
Three people with apparent gunshot wounds were also found on the campus of Alcorn State University in Claiborne County on Saturday evening, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said. One of the victims died, the agency said. Police found the victims after a call reporting shots fired in the area of the industrial technology building. No arrests have been announced.
The shooting occurred after a crowd of more than 7,000 watched Alcorn State defeat Lincoln University of Oakland, Calif., in the Mississippi school’s homecoming game Saturday afternoon.
In Jackson, police responded around 7 p.m. Saturday to the tailgating area of Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, where Jackson State University hosted Alabama State University. A juvenile was shot in the abdomen and taken to the hospital, police said. No arrests were announced and few other details about the shooting were immediately available.
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Associated Press freelance photographer Katie Adkins in Leland and AP writer Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed.
