Cedrick D. Hood, a 26-year-old Black/African American man from Clinton, Iowa, was killed on the evening of December 3, 2020, in a shooting outside the Hop-N-Shop convenience store at 716 South Fourth Street. Shortly before 6:15 p.m., Hood arrived at the store in a Saturn Outlook with a woman and her son. The woman and the child went inside, while Hood remained seated behind the wheel near the store's front entrance.
What appeared to be an ordinary stop quickly became deadly when another vehicle pulled into the parking lot beside the driver's side of the Saturn. Surveillance footage later reviewed in the criminal case showed Carlton Douglas Jr. getting out, approaching Hood's driver-side window, and firing six shots. Hood was struck multiple times. Clinton Fire personnel provided emergency medical assistance before he was transported to MercyOne Hospital, where he died from his injuries.
The woman who had gone into the store told investigators that she was near the ATM when she heard what she believed were five gunshots. Looking outside, she saw someone she knew by the nickname “C” getting into the passenger side of a four-door vehicle parked next to Hood's SUV. She said that vehicle and another car then left the parking lot together, traveling west on Eighth Avenue South. Police records showed that Douglas was known by the alias “C,” and the witness subsequently identified him from a photographic lineup. Investigators also learned that Douglas had gone to the woman's home shortly before the killing looking for Hood and had instructed her to tell Hood that he was trying to find him.
The investigation uncovered a complicated personal dispute that prosecutors would later present as the background to the killing. Hood and Douglas had both been involved with the same woman. The woman accompanying Hood told police that the other woman was pregnant with Hood's child and also had a child with Douglas. Hood had recently stopped living at that woman's residence and had been staying elsewhere. Only four days before the fatal shooting, police had responded after Douglas's vehicle was struck by gunfire. Douglas was with the woman at the time, and she told officers she believed Hood might have been responsible for the damage. Evidence presented years later at trial also showed that Hood had sent Douglas threatening text messages during November 2020 and that Douglas believed Hood had shot out the rear window of his car. Prosecutors argued that the Hop-N-Shop shooting was retaliation arising from that escalating conflict.
The surveillance evidence became especially important because it captured Douglas approaching Hood's vehicle and firing at him before returning to the car in which Douglas's girlfriend was waiting. She later testified that immediately after the shooting Douglas made a statement characterizing what had just happened as first-degree murder and told her to drive away. The day after Hood was killed, Clinton police announced that a first-degree murder warrant had been issued for Douglas. He was not taken into custody immediately, but investigators continued looking for him until January 3, 2021, when police arrested him at a residence in the 500 block of North 13th Street in Clinton. At his first court appearance, a judge set his bond at $1 million cash-only.
Douglas ultimately faced charges of first-degree murder and possession or control of a firearm as a felon. The case remained pending through several continuances before reaching a Clinton County jury in June 2023. During the trial, prosecutors presented the surveillance footage, testimony concerning the shooting and getaway, the relationship conflict involving Hood and Douglas, the threatening messages, and evidence concerning the earlier shooting of Douglas's vehicle. After hearing the evidence, the jury found Douglas guilty of both first-degree murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Douglas was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder. He also received a five-year sentence for the firearm conviction, ordered to run concurrently with the life sentence. Court records further required Douglas to pay $150,000 in restitution to Hood's son. The conviction did not end the litigation. Douglas appealed, arguing in part that jury instructions concerning self-defense and the duty to retreat were improper and that the murder and felon-in-possession charges should have been tried separately. On October 30, 2024, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions. The appellate court concluded that the challenged issues had not been properly preserved for review at trial and rejected Douglas's effort to obtain relief through plain-error review. With that ruling, the first-degree murder conviction and life sentence remained in place.
