Updated October 12, 2025 at 9:05 AM CDT
The small town of Leland, Miss., was rocked Friday night by a mass shooting at a homecoming event that left six people dead.
"An event like this has never happened in this city," Leland Mayor John Lee told NPR by phone. "We're a close knit city, we're not a violent city."
Leland is a small town of roughly 3,700 people where "everybody knows everybody," Lee said.
The shooting took place in downtown Leland after the local high school's homecoming football game. The gathering takes place annually: "Families ... in town visiting get together and just have family and fun," Lee said.
As well as the four who died on the scene, two died later at a hospital, according to a later statement from Washington County Coroner La'Quesha Watkins.
Some 20 people were injured in the gunfire after people gathered in the downtown area following the game, Mississippi state Senator Derrick Simmons said. Of those, four were in critical condition and were flown from a hospital in nearby Greenville to a larger medical center in the state capital, Jackson, Simmons told The Associated Press.
On Saturday, Leland's police department declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Lee said that no suspect was in custody. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that it was helping to investigate the shooting.
The Gun Violence Archive says that so far this year, the U.S. has seen more than 330 mass shootings — in which four or more people were shot.
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