Tammy Lynn Hodges, a 53-year-old White woman, was killed on the evening of February 7, 2024, at her home in the Pilot Mountain area of Stokes County, North Carolina. At about 8:30 p.m., the Stokes County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call reporting a shooting at a residence on Knobview Lane. When deputies reached the home, they found Hodges suffering from a gunshot wound.
Emergency medical personnel attempted to save her, but she died at the scene.
Investigators quickly focused on Sammy Roland Collins, whom authorities identified as Hodges’s husband. Deputies arrested Collins at the residence in connection with the shooting. He was charged with murder and taken to the Stokes County Jail, where he was initially held without bond. The North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence later identified Collins as the alleged perpetrator, listed him as 68 at the time, and classified the firearm killing as involving spouses.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators did not publicly identify what they believed had prompted the shooting. The Stokes County Sheriff’s Office said the motive remained unknown and that the investigation was continuing. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation was brought in to assist local authorities with the case. No additional suspect was identified in the initial reporting, and the allegations centered on Collins.
Hodges had deep ties to the area. She was born May 2, 1970, in Surry County and was living in Pilot Mountain at the time of her death. She worked for Advance Auto in Dobson, where she was training to become a general manager. Her family remembered her as a devoted mother and grandmother who was especially close to her grandchildren and also enjoyed friendships connected with a Boxer dog club. She left behind a daughter, Brandy Hodges; a son, Brad Hodges, and his wife Katy; several grandchildren; her sister, Lisa Bustle; and her dogs, Evie and Lilly. Her grandparents, Opal and Bill Hodges, who had raised her, died before her.
Family and friends gathered for visitation at Moody Funeral Home in Mount Airy on February 13, 2024. Hodges’s funeral was held the following afternoon at Central View Baptist Church, with the Rev. Dud Spencer conducting the service, and she was buried in the church cemetery. The services came less than a week after the shooting that abruptly ended her life and resulted in a murder charge against Collins.
Online reporting documents Collins’s arrest, the murder charge, and his initial detention without bond. Publicly indexed sources reviewed through September 2026 do not provide a verified later trial verdict, guilty plea, conviction, acquittal, dismissal, or sentencing outcome in Hodges’s case. The most clearly documented criminal action remains Collins’s arrest at the scene and the murder charge filed against him following the fatal shooting.
