Willie Earl Ford Jr., a 43-year-old Black/African American man, was killed in Jackson, Mississippi, on the afternoon of December 28, 2023. Jackson police were called to the 1200 block of West Ridgeway Street shortly before 3:30 p.m. after receiving a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found Ford suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
He died at the scene before he could be transported for medical treatment.
The investigation quickly shifted from determining what had happened to identifying the person police believed was responsible. Authorities publicly identified 25-year-old Felix McClinton as the suspect in Ford's killing and announced that he was wanted on a murder charge. Police did not release extensive information explaining what led to the confrontation, whether Ford and McClinton knew one another, or what motive investigators believed was behind the shooting.
Within approximately a day of the killing, McClinton surrendered to authorities. Local news reports announced on December 29 that the 25-year-old murder suspect had turned himself in after police sought him in connection with Ford's death. His surrender brought the immediate search for the suspect to an end and placed the case into the criminal justice system as a homicide prosecution.
Publicly available reporting on the case is limited beyond McClinton's identification and surrender. The initial reports do not provide a detailed account of the moments leading up to the gunfire, identify additional suspects, or describe evidence police recovered from the scene. No reliable publicly available reports located provide a subsequent trial verdict, conviction, acquittal, or sentencing outcome for McClinton. The available information therefore establishes that Ford was shot multiple times and killed on West Ridgeway Street, that police identified McClinton as the person wanted for his murder, and that McClinton subsequently turned himself in to authorities.
