At least eight people were killed across rural Mississippi after shootings broke out in three towns on Friday night and early Saturday morning during the heart of high school football season. Two of the shootings, in Heidelberg, Miss., and Rolling Fork, Miss., occurred on public high school campuses that were hosting games.
The deadliest of the three incidents occurred around midnight Friday in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland, where six people were killed and others were injured as a large crowd celebrated homecoming weekend on Main Street. As of Saturday afternoon, no arrests had been made.
In Heidelberg, a town of about 600 some 80 miles east of Jackson, the state capital, two people were killed late Friday, according to Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi. Authorities in Rolling Fork would not say whether anyone had been injured.
“Our state is praying for the victims and their families,” Mr. Reeves said in a statement.
The shootings cast a pall on what is normally a jubilant season in the Mississippi countryside, as stifling heat gives way to cooler autumn days and former residents return to reconnect with the community of their youth.
Instead, shock and grief spread across close-knit communities around the state on Saturday as news of the shootings trickled out.
“Lord I took a nap n now I’m back up n my babygirl is not here,” Cassandra Dean, the mother of one of the Leland victims, wrote in a public post on Facebook.
In both Heidelberg and Leland, it was homecoming weekend, a particularly poignant and celebratory time in much of rural Mississippi. Graduates from small-town high schools are often forced to leave the place they grew up to seek work far afield, making the yearly autumn trek home about much more than football.
“In these communities, you go to school with people you live down the street from,” said Von Gordon, 45, who was born in rural Sunflower County, which borders Washington County where Leland is located. He now works in Jackson as an executive in the nonprofit sector. “You grow up, and of course you do have to go out because the economy doesn’t support jobs. So coming back, it’s not just remembrance of your school days, but you’re renewing community ties as well.”
The school district’s facilities in Leland had been undergoing renovations, something that prompted even more interest among graduates who had moved away.
“We had more and more people coming home,” said Brandon Taylor, the Leland School District board president.
While a sense of community defines rural Mississippi, it is also a place with a strong gun culture and problems with gun violence.
According to Johns Hopkins University researchers in a June 2025 report, the state had the highest gun death rate in the country in 2023. Mississippi law makes it easy to purchase, own and carry a gun. It is one of 29 states that allow firearms to be carried without a permit, according to the U.S. Concealed Carry Association.
Mr. Gordon said these factors helped explain Mississippi’s tragic Friday night.
“These high-powered guns are easier to get in the Delta than a job, that’s for damn sure,” he said.
Leland, with a population of less than 4,000 people, is among a group of small cities and towns in the Mississippi Delta that share a deep-rooted history of cotton production and Blues music.
John Lee, who is serving his first term as mayor of Leland, said during a news conference Saturday afternoon that gun violence must end.
“We’re making every effort to find out who did the shooting,” he said. “My condolences to the families of the deceased. We’re just in prayer right now for our whole city because this is not something we represent here in the city of Leland.”
The mayor said that on Saturday afternoon, more shots were fired near a grocery story on Main Street. He did not say if anyone was injured.
“We definitely need to crackdown on gun violence,” Mr. Lee said. “These guns need to be taken off the streets.”
In a phone interview on Saturday, George Mumford Jr., a 33-year-old Leland resident, said that he had been tailgating and catching up with old friends during the Leland High School football game. The home team lost badly, but the mood remained festive.
“We have a few bars and clubs on the main strip, and so everybody goes there and hangs out,” said Mr. Mumford, who works as a carpenter and musician. “I made it up there maybe about 10 o’clock. I kind of walked around, saw people, smiled. Just a good time.”
Around midnight, he said, he strolled to one end of Main Street, where a younger crowd had gathered. “It was a lot of unfamiliar faces,” he said.
Mr. Mumford left the area, but as he did he heard a number of gunshots — “well over 50 rounds,” he estimated.
The shots sounded as if they were coming from different weapons, he said. There was a stampede and a young woman fell in front of him. He helped her up and got her to her vehicle, he said.
“It ruined the entire weekend,” Mr. Mumford said. “This is a week that we have been anticipating all year.”
The shooting also caused those who returned to leave once again. “People from Memphis, from Dallas, they got on the road last night,” he said.
Patansy Miller-Hampton, a Leland resident and former teacher, usually goes to homecoming every year, she said.
But this year, the celebration fell on the same weekend as the homecoming of Jackson State University, her alma mater. She was in Jackson when she began receiving phone calls from her former students.
“The kids who I taught were right there,” Mrs. Miller-Hampton said. “They were crying on the phone with me. It’s so traumatic. One of the kids described it as a war zone.”
In a statement released on Saturday, the Washington County coroner’s office identified the six victims killed: Oreshama Johnson, 41; Calvin Plant, 19; Shelbyona Powell, 25; Kaslyn Johnson, 18; Amos Brantley, 18; and JaMichael Jones, 34.
At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Lee, the Leland mayor, said that a curfew would soon go into effect.
In Caledonia, Miss., a city of about 1,100 people, the local government recently announced a curfew for unaccompanied minors during its homecoming week, which begins on Oct. 19.
In Heidelberg, the chief of the local police department, Cornell White, said the shooting that took two lives in his town happened late on Friday night, after a football game had ended.
It was unclear on Saturday if anyone else had been injured. The police had one suspect in custody, identified by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department in a post on social media as Tylar Jarod Goodloe, 18. But Chief White said that the police were still investigating the shooting.
Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.
Audra D. S. Burch is a national reporter, based in South Florida and Atlanta, writing about race and identity around the country.
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