Shunda Faye Brown, 48, a Black/African American woman from the Porterville community in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, was one of three people caught in a deadly Christmas Eve shooting on December 24, 2024. At about 7:10 p.m., the Lauderdale County E-911 center received a report that three people had been shot at a residence in the 9500 block of Northeast Cole Road.
When deputies and Metro Ambulance arrived, one wounded person had already been taken to a local hospital in a private vehicle, while Brown was treated at the scene for a gunshot wound before being transported by ambulance. A third victim, Treyvone Young, a Northeast Lauderdale student who was one day short of his sixteenth birthday, was found unresponsive and was pronounced dead. Brown and Johnnie L. Mosley, of the Lauderdale community, survived the initial attack in critical condition and were subsequently transferred to Jackson for higher-level medical treatment. Although the shooting occurred on December 24, online reporting and Brown’s funeral-home record indicate that she died from her injuries on December 27, 2024, rather than on Christmas Eve.
The alleged gunman had fled before deputies arrived, and investigators immediately began searching for him and a vehicle connected with the shooting. At approximately 9:30 p.m. that night, deputies located the suspected vehicle in the 7000 block of Welch Road. Joseph Spinks of Toomsuba was found at a nearby residence and taken into custody. Investigators processed the Northeast Cole Road shooting scene and then continued their investigation at the Welch Road location, obtaining a search warrant for Spinks’s vehicle and residence. At approximately 3:30 a.m. on December 25, Spinks was formally charged with murder and booked into the Lauderdale County Detention Facility. As the investigation developed, authorities charged him with murder in Young’s death and two counts of attempted murder for the shootings of Brown and Mosley. By December 26, his combined bond on those charges had been set at $700,000—$500,000 on the murder allegation and $100,000 for each attempted-murder count.
The case changed substantially when Brown and Mosley died from their wounds. Sheriff Ward Calhoun announced on December 27 that all three people shot in the Christmas Eve attack had died, and Spinks’s charges were upgraded to three counts of murder. Investigators also determined that Spinks had already been out on bond in connection with a felony DUI charge when the shooting occurred. Authorities revoked the bonds that had been issued, and at that stage he was ordered to remain in the Lauderdale County Detention Facility while the homicide investigation continued. Reporting described the shooting as believed to have been targeted and indicated that investigators had established that Spinks knew at least one of the people who was shot, although authorities did not publicly disclose a specific motive or explain what led to the violence at the Northeast Cole Road residence. The Sheriff’s Department said the evidence would be presented to the next available grand jury and that further charges remained possible as investigators continued assembling the case.
Authorities also disclosed that they believed another person may have been present or involved. Sheriff Calhoun said investigators had another person of interest who could have played a role in the shooting and publicly urged anyone who had been at the scene or knew what happened to contact law enforcement. The available reporting did not publicly identify that person of interest, and no reliable subsequent online report located through August 2026 announced the arrest or charging of a second suspect in connection with Brown’s death. Likewise, the publicly accessible reporting located does not document a completed trial, guilty plea, conviction, acquittal, or sentencing for Spinks in the three killings. The Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office’s current inmate roster does not show Spinks among the presently listed inmates under his surname, but the available public records do not establish from that fact alone whether he was transferred, released, or otherwise moved from the county detention facility. What is firmly documented is that Spinks was arrested within hours of the shooting, ultimately accused of three murders after Brown and Mosley succumbed to their injuries, and that investigators were still pursuing the possibility of another person’s involvement as the case moved toward grand-jury review.
