A violent confrontation in a small Mississippi parking lot ended with a 27-year-old man dead. Atha Eldridge Falkner, a resident of the Highway 309 South area, was shot in the Watkins Grocery parking lot in Victoria on the night of December 9, 2018. Deputies arrived about 1 a.m. and began CPR; firefighters and other first responders continued life-saving measures for roughly an hour but the coroner, James Richard Anderson, pronounced Falkner dead at the scene.

Sheriff’s investigators say the shooting followed an apparent altercation between a female and Falkner, after which an unidentified suspect arrived and fired. A large, hostile crowd at the scene complicated witness interviews, and officers from neighboring departments were called in to secure the area. The sheriff’s office asked the public for tips and noted rewards were available for information in unsolved homicides in the county.

If anyone has information about that night in Victoria or about who might have been the shooter, please come forward.