On a December Friday night in south Jackson, Mississippi, Kevin Clay, a 22-year-old Black man, was at the Waffle House on Highway 18 when an argument in the parking lot erupted into gunfire. The restaurant sits along a busy stretch of road in south Jackson, and that night it became the backdrop to a shooting that would leave three people badly wounded and Clay fatally injured.
Police later said the shooting happened around 11 p.m. on Friday, December 15, 2023.
When officers arrived at the Waffle House, they found a Kia Rio in the parking lot that had been reported stolen, its exterior riddled with bullet holes. By then, the wounded were gone: a private vehicle had already rushed the three victims to Merit Health Central. At the hospital, authorities learned that all three had suffered gunshot wounds, and investigators quickly linked them back to the bullet-scarred car and the shell casings left behind at the Highway 18 restaurant.
Inside Merit Health, the aftermath unfolded in front of unsuspecting patients and families. One woman who had brought her daughter in for a fever later described the emergency room lobby as descending into “complete chaos,” with staff members running, blood visible on the floor, and the three shooting victims crying out and slipping in and out of consciousness as nurses and doctors fought to stabilize them. The witness said the scene of the wounded being wheeled back for treatment, their voices raised in fear and pain, stayed with her long after she left the hospital that night.
Investigators determined that the emergency-room patients were the same three people caught up in the gunfire outside the Waffle House, and that the violence had grown out of an altercation in the parking lot. In the days that followed, officials publicly identified Clay as one of the victims and confirmed that he died from his wounds. Another victim, identified as Latimmis Washington, was charged with possession of the stolen Kia Rio found at the scene and taken into custody on that charge, while the condition and identity of the third wounded person were not disclosed in detail.
An obituary on Legacy.com recorded that Clay passed away on December 19, 2023, in Jackson, indicating that he survived for several days after the shooting before finally succumbing to his injuries. His name and photograph were later added to the National Gun Violence Memorial website, where he is listed among thousands of Americans “lost to gun violence” on December 15, 2023, reflecting the date of the attack that led to his death.
Despite multiple news stories and public appeals, authorities have not announced any arrest or named any suspect in connection with the actual shooting that killed Clay. Jackson police and local media repeatedly emphasized that detectives were still gathering evidence, urged anyone with information about what happened in the Waffle House parking lot to come forward, and circulated the department and Crime Stoppers phone numbers. As of the most recent available reports, the case remains open, with the only publicly reported charge tied to the incident being the possession-of-stolen-vehicle count arising from the bullet-riddled Kia, and the person or people who fired the shots that ended Clay’s life have not been brought to trial.
