A 16-year-old male is dead following a shooting near Bramblett Drive off Sandy Run Road in Lamar County.
Sheriff Danny Rigel said on the evening of March 14, dispatch received a call from an individual regarding gunshots near the south end of Bramblett Drive, which they said emanated from a set of nearby trailers. At approximately 9 a.m. the next morning, a resident called police to report that her nephew had snuck of the house the night of the gunshots and had not returned by the next morning.
“The lady said (her nephew) had snuck out several times in the past, but he always came back,” Rigel said. “When he didn’t come back by the next morning (March 15), she reported him missing.
“(After the initial report of gunshots), we sent officers down there to look, but we couldn’t find anything. So when we got the call of the missing person, we sent officers back down there again, and they looked where the witnesses said they heard the gunshots.”
Shortly after that, the teenager’s family was returning home and found the boy’s body in a clump of bushes and tall grass off of Bramblett Drive.
“You couldn’t see it from Bramblett Drive,” Rigel said. “We didn’t go over there to look, because the grass was high, and you would think that if anybody went through that grass, they would’ve trampled the grass or whatever.
“But the grass wasn’t disturbed. It was about 40 yards off of Bramblett Drive. The 16-year-old suffered from at least one gunshot wound.”
Deputies found several shell casings at the site of the crime, which have been taken into evidence. The teenager’s body has been sent to the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory in Gulfport for an autopsy.
The victim has not yet been publicly identified.
Officials are asking anyone with information related to the incident to call the Lamar County Sheriff’s Department at (601) 794-1005 or Metro Crime Stoppers at (601) 582-7867.
“We’re still interviewing people, looking at security videos,” Rigel said. “We’re still in the real early stages of the investigation.”
