4 arrests made in connection with mass shooting that left 6 dead in
Mississippi, FBI says
[October 14, 2025]
By JEFF MARTIN and HALLIE GOLDEN
Three people have been arrested on murder charges and a fourth person on
an attempted murder charge in a weekend shooting that left six dead and
more than a dozen injured in a small Mississippi town, the FBI announced
Monday.
Teviyon L. Powell, 29, William Bryant, 29, and Morgan Lattimore, 25,
have been charged with capital murder, while Latoya A. Powell, 44, has
been charged with attempted murder in the mass shooting, a spokesperson
for the FBI’s Jackson Field Office said.
It was not immediately clear whether they have attorneys. The Associated
Press left a voicemail with the Washington County Public Defender’s
Office asking if its attorneys are representing the defendants.
The shooting, which came 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.
Other shootings were reported at two Mississippi universities on
Saturday, as those schools celebrated their homecoming weekends.
Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for Friday night’s
shooting in Leland, but the FBI said the gunfire appears to have been
“sparked by a disagreement among several individuals.” The spokesperson
said without elaborating in an email late Monday that “other arrests are
pending” as the investigation continues into the shooting in the rural
northwest Delta region.
Four of the victims died at the scene, where abandoned shoes were left
and blood stained the pavement of a downtown street the following day.
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 told the AP.
The shooting in Leland was the 14th mass killing in 2025, according to
The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing
Database. The database tracks all homicides in the U.S. since 2006 in
which four or more people were killed intentionally within a 24-hour
period, not including any offender.
Elsewhere, in the small town of Heidelberg on the east side of the
state, the bodies of two people, including a pregnant woman, were found
on a high school campus Friday night. That shooting happened the same
evening Heidelberg High School played its homecoming football game,
according to police and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves. Police have not
said exactly when the gunfire occurred or how close it was to the
stadium.
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Friends and family of victims of a homecoming shooting embrace in
downtown Leland, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Katie
Adkins)
An 18-year-old man was arrested and charged with two counts of
murder and illegally having a gun on a school campus in the
Heidelberg shooting, Jasper County Jail records show.
Heidelberg, a town of about 640 residents, is about 85 miles (135
kilometers) southeast of the state capital of Jackson.
On Saturday evening, three people also were found with apparent
gunshot wounds on the Alcorn State University campus in Claiborne
County, 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 were announced.
The shooting happened after a crowd of more than 7,000 watched
Alcorn State defeat Lincoln University of Oakland, California, 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
had been shot in the abdomen and was taken to a hospital, police
said. No arrests were announced, and few other details about that
shooting were immediately available.
___
Associated Press freelance photographer Katie Adkins in Leland and
AP writer Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed.
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