A dispute on Halloween 2021 in rural southern Simpson County, Mississippi, ended in the fatal shooting of 33-year-old Joshua Thurman. Thurman was at a residence on Big V Road when a vehicle arrived carrying two women and a man identified as Tremaine Haynes. While Thurman was talking with one of the women who had exited the vehicle, Haynes reportedly walked up from behind and fired a single shot to the back of Thurman’s head.

Deputies from the Simpson County Sheriff’s Department responded after a 911 call and found Thurman’s body in the yard. Haynes and the two women remained at the scene and witnesses described the attack as unprovoked. The sheriff’s department led the investigation and Haynes was arrested.

At trial in May 2023 a jury rejected Haynes’s claim of self-defense or defense of another and convicted him of second-degree murder; Circuit Court Judge Stanley Sorey imposed the maximum sentence of 40 years in Mississippi Department of Corrections custody. Did anyone who knew Joshua or who was in that neighborhood on October 31, 2021 notice anything that could shed more light on what led up to the shooting?