On a Saturday afternoon, April 24, 2021, the life of 16-year-old Lakendric Cortez Francis of Canton, Mississippi, was tragically cut short in a shooting on Interstate 55 in Ridgeland. The Black / African American male was driving a black four-door Infiniti sedan south on the interstate around 1:30 p.m. when his vehicle was fired upon. Francis died at the scene, while an adult passenger in his car suffered minor injuries and was treated at a hospital before being released the same day.
The investigation that followed pointed not to a random act of road rage, but to a dispute that had started earlier. Authorities from several agencies, including the Ridgeland Police Department, Madison Police, Madison County Sheriff's Office, Canton Police, Jackson Police, and the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, collaborated on the case. Their efforts led to the arrests of two other teenagers. Marcus Luckett, who was 15 at the time, was identified as the shooter and was charged with murder. Another teen, 16-year-old Kevin Harris, was charged with accessory after the fact to murder. The suspect vehicle, a tan Chevrolet Malibu, was located and seized in Jackson.
The motive for the shooting appeared to be an ongoing conflict between Luckett and Francis. Investigators learned that about a month before the fatal shooting, Luckett himself had been shot in a separate incident, and it is believed that this earlier event fueled his actions on I-55. In February 2025, Marcus Luckett Jr. pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder. A judge in the Madison County Circuit Court sentenced him to forty years in prison. He will be required to serve the first twenty-eight years of his sentence without the possibility of parole or early release. Upon his release, he will be on supervised probation for five years.
