LELAND, Miss. (AP) — Law enforcement officers and community leaders are asking for the public’s help in identifying people wanted for questioning about a mass shooting in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland that left six people dead.
A news conference is planned for Thursday afternoon at Leland City Hall, where local police and officials from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the FBI and other state and federal agencies are expected to provide updates on the hunt for suspects.
The downtown street where the shooting took place was still littered with shards of broken glass Thursday afternoon. Nearby, someone had placed three stuffed animals and a few candles on a street corner.
“We’re still trying to gather information on possible suspects out there,” Leland Mayor John Lee said.
Several suspects have been charged with capital murder in the shooting last Friday night that left more than a dozen people injured in addition to the six killed.
The FBI’s Jackson Field Office has been posting pictures of suspects wanted for questioning in the mass shooting. It happened as people celebrated homecoming weekend in downtown Leland shortly after a high school football game.
“It’s still kind of numbness at this point,” Lee said Thursday. “Families are still grieving, and they don’t have closure right now. We’re talking about funerals not even prepared yet.”
The shooting happened at a community event that’s been held for years in the small downtown area on homecoming weekend “where everybody will gather in the streets and have a good time,” the mayor said.
“This is not anything that’s happened anywhere close to our community ever before,” he said.
The Leland shooting was the deadliest of several across Mississippi last weekend. Other shootings were reported at two other towns where homecoming football games were being held and at Alcorn State and Jackson State universities, which were also celebrating homecoming weekends.
Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the Leland shooting, but the FBI has said the gunfire appears to have been “sparked by a disagreement among several individuals.”
Witness Camish Hopkins described seeing people wounded and bleeding and four people dead on the ground.
“It was the most horrific scene I’d ever seen,” Hopkins said.
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Associated Press Writer Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed.
By SOPHIE BATES
Associated Press
