9 people have now been arrested in connection with Mississippi mass shooting, FBI says

LELAND, Miss. (AP) — Nine people have now been arrested in connection with a mass shooting in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland that left six people dead, an FBI special agent said Thursday.

Robert Eikhoff, special agent in charge of the FBI's Jackson Field Office, appeared at briefing but gave no additional details of the new arrests or charges those people face. Authorities had earlier said five people were in custody.

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.

State and local law officers who spoke at Thursday's news conference asked the public to share what they know with authorities.

“We believe there are people who have valuable information who have not yet spoken with law enforcement,” Eikhoff said.

Several suspects have been charged with capital murder in the shooting last Friday around midnight that left more than a dozen people injured in addition to the six killed. Two of the injured are in critical condition, Eikhoff said.

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,” Leland Mayor John 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.”

Reseann Mitchell said she is the mother of Terrogernal S. Martin, 33, who is charged with capital murder. She said her son is innocent and that he was working security at a local business when the shooting took place.

“He was standing outside all night, and when the shooting took place, he pushed everyone inside,” Mitchell said. “When he realized I wasn’t on the inside — he had my purse. He went in my purse and got my gun out to come outside and look for me.”

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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