Eric Hyder was a 32-year-old man from Claiborne County, Mississippi, who was killed by gunfire on January 13, 2014, as he made his way home from work along Y Camp Road near Port Gibson. That Monday evening, he was almost home—authorities later said he was only about a hundred yards from his house—when a car pulled up beside him on the quiet rural road.
In that brief encounter, a single shot was fired, and Hyder collapsed on the roadside, turning an ordinary walk home into a sudden homicide that stunned his family and neighbors.
Investigators quickly focused on the car and its driver. Witness information and leads pointed them to 20-year-old Marque Daishon West, a young man who, like Hyder, lived on Y Camp Road. According to Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas, West was accused of driving up to Hyder as he walked, shooting him once, and then speeding away into the night. The sheriff publicly described the killing as a senseless crime, emphasizing how close Hyder had been to the safety of his own home. A manhunt followed, and a tip led deputies to West. Within about a day of the shooting, Claiborne County authorities announced that West had been taken into custody and charged with murder in connection with Hyder’s death.
In the days after the shooting, Hyder’s family tried to lay him to rest, but even the funeral service was overshadowed by law enforcement activity. On the Sunday following his death, mourners gathered at a Claiborne County church for the funeral. As the service ended and the family walked outside, deputies who had been waiting nearby moved in to arrest Hyder’s brother, Jopravious Hyder, on outstanding warrants for two counts of burglary. Witnesses recalled seeing people suddenly running and the confusion as officers chased Jopravious into nearby woods before bringing him back in handcuffs. Family members later said they felt the timing was an insult added to tragedy, arguing that deputies had all week to serve the warrants instead of choosing the moment when the family was trying to bury Eric. Jopravious was ultimately booked on burglary and resisting arrest charges and was held in the Claiborne County Jail, in a cell area his mother said was directly across from the man accused of killing his brother.
Meanwhile, the murder case against Marque West moved into the courts. A Claiborne County grand jury indicted West for the first-degree murder of Eric Hyder under Mississippi’s homicide statute, a charge that carried the possibility of a very long prison term. Rather than go to trial on that count, West later chose to enter a guilty plea to second-degree murder, a lesser but still serious form of homicide under the same statute. In accepting the plea, the Circuit Court of Claiborne County sentenced him to thirty years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, falling within the statutory range of twenty-five to forty years for second-degree murder.
Years after the sentencing, West sought to undo the outcome by filing a motion for post-conviction relief. He argued, among other things, that he had not fully understood his parole eligibility and questioned aspects of his sentence. The Mississippi Court of Appeals reviewed the record, including the plea paperwork he had signed, and concluded that his claims did not warrant an evidentiary hearing. In August 2017, the appellate court affirmed the lower court’s denial of his motion, leaving his conviction and thirty-year sentence for the murder of Eric Hyder intact.
Taken together, the public record sketches a stark narrative: a working man shot down within sight of his home, a swift manhunt leading to the arrest of a young neighbor from the same road, a grieving family whose funeral was disrupted by another arrest, and a legal process that culminated in a long prison term for the man who admitted to killing him.
