Three more Greenwood residents have been killed in shootings since early Friday morning, when a 19-year-old woman died after being shot Thursday night.
Three people were shot, two fatally, around 11:30 p.m. Saturday at the intersection of Main and McGehee streets, near Crosstown Grocery, Leflore County Coroner Debra Sanders said.
Two Greenwood men — Marlon Edwards, 42, and Leroye Watkins, 39 — later died, each from a single gunshot wound.
Edwards was pronounced dead at the scene, said Sanders, who said she arrived there around 12:07 a.m. Sunday. Watkins was taken to Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s emergency room, where he died around 12:43 a.m. Sunday, Sanders said.
Information on the third victim, whose wounds were not fatal, was unavailable.
On Friday, Greenwood resident Robert Love was shot and killed sometime before 5 p.m. in the 300 block of Broad Street.
Sanders said Love, who was about 38, died from multiple gunshot wounds at the scene.
Jerome Greenleaf, a Greenwood resident who had been friends with Love since 2004, described Love “as a true friend and a great father.”
Love was the father of Robert Love Jr., a 15-year-old Amanda Elzy High School student who died in February 2018 following a shooting.
Samone Harris
The three most recent homicides in Greenwood followed the death of 19-year-old Samone Harris. Harris, an Itta Bena resident, was attending a graduation party Thursday night at the Confederate Memorial Building on Henderson Street when she was shot.
She was taken to the Greenwood hospital and died there a little before 1 a.m. Friday.
Antonio Binder, a former recruiter for Mississippi Valley State University’s high school equivalency program, had gotten to know Harris when she enrolled in the program in 2019.
At first Harris, whose full name was Tania Samone Harris, was very shy in the program, Binder recalled. Though classes started at 8 a.m., Harris showed up at 7 a.m., when Binder opened the classroom, he said. The two talked, eventually warming up to each other, and Binder found out that Harris “had such a bright spirit, and it literally lit the room,” he said
Harris eventually left MVSU’s high school equivalency program to reenroll in high school — Binder could not say where — to earn a high school diploma rather than a GED, Binder said.
“I think what people will miss about Tania is her smile and her spirit,” he said. “She made sure that by the time she left your presence, you were in a better condition spiritually, emotionally.”
Eaven B. Troutman
On Friday evening, the police arrested and charged a 21-year-old Greenwood man, Eaven B. Troutman, 3007 McKennedy Drive, with murder, but it could not be immediately determined what slaying he is alleged to have committed.
Troutman, whose bond was set at $1 million, remained in the Leflore County Jail as of Monday afternoon.
It is unclear if there is any connection between the three separate shooting incidents.
Neither Deputy Police Chief Marvin Hammond nor Chief Terrence Craft could be reached Monday.
According to Commonwealth reporting, there have been nine homicides in the county this year, including five in Greenwood, and all involved guns. At this time last year, seven homicides had occurred in the county, including four in Greenwood.
At a special called meeting Monday afternoon, the Greenwood City Council passed a resolution declaring a state of emergency in response to the gun violence.
- Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
