People scattered from a packed banquet hall in McComb following a shootout that left one man dead and wounded two others early Sunday morning, leaving few witnesses, police said.
Frankiyon Bates, 26, of Magnolia, died of multiple gunshot wounds in the shooting that occurred around 1:30 a.m. at the Presley Banquet Event Center on Presley Boulevard.
Pike County Coroner Wally Jones pronounced Bates dead at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center.
The two other people who were wounded were treated and released from the hospital. Their names weren’t released. McComb police Detective Victoria Carter said one was grazed and another was shot in the ankle.
She said the shooting happened during a jersey party at the center.
“When we got there everybody was gone,” she said. “The only thing that was there were the cars that were actually shot.
“When we got there it was the person who was sponsoring it and the DJ and a couple of security guys. We had nobody to interview.”
It’s unclear how many vehicles were shot. Carter said none of the owners of the vehicles had filed an incident report with police. On Sunday afternoon, a lone pickup truck — both its driver’s and passenger’s side windows shot out — was the only vehicle still in the parking lot.
The barrage of gunshots, apparently at the hands of multiple gunmen, left the parking lot littered with shell casings.
Residents across McComb, from the north end of the city and further east to McComb-Holmesville Road reported hearing the gunfire on social media.
“It was one of the most horrendous scenes I’ve ever been on as far as the number of shell casings,” Jones said. “It was like a war zone out there. I personally counted 50 casings.”
“There were a lot of shell casings, a lot of gunfire,” Ward said.
He said police believe there were multiple people involved in the shooting based on the number of shell casings at the scene.
“It was definitely more than one shooter. It was more than two shooters. It was more than three shooters,” he said.
Carter said she believes some of the bullets were fired into the air, otherwise more people would have been hurt or killed.
“As far as them shooting into the crowd, I can’t see that at all because there would have been more people dead,” she said.
Whoever knows what happened isn’t talking to police, she said.
“We haven’t gotten a lot of cooperation with the public and nobody was there and they keep saying there was more 200 people there,” Carter said. “Well, they need to come forward.”
