Authorities are looking for clues into a shooting that left a 10-year-old boy dead Sunday night Christmas Eve in Coahoma County.
The Coahoma County Sheriff’s Office received a call at about 9 p.m. Sunday about a child that had been shot in Friars Point and was being taken by a private vehicle to the hospital in Clarksdale in a personal vehicle.
An investigation revealed a 14-year-old girl and the 10-year-old were riding around in downtown Friars Point when someone shot at their vehicle, hitting the 10-year-old boy. He later died at the Clarksdale hospital.
The boy was identified as Ladarius Nesbitt, of Lambert, Miss., and he was pronounced dead at the emergency room of Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.
Friars Point is a town of about 900 people and this Christmas homicide has the community on edge.
This is not the first child killed in Clarksdale. A 7-year-old was shot and killed by random gunfire aimed at another person in October 2021. A 15-year-old boy was found shot to death in an alley off of Grant Street in the Brickyard neighborhood of Clarksdale, on Aug. 18, 2023. In July three 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old girl were shot on Andrews Street, also in the Brickyard neighborhood.
A 15-year-old male was also shot by a former Clarksdale Police officer on West Second Street in June of this year, in what may have been a burglary. That incident is still under investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
No arrests have been made in any of these shootings.
The Coahoma County Sheriff’s department is seeking information on the Friars Point shooting and a $2,500 reward is being offer for information on this shooting. The community is asked to call Coahoma County Sheriff’s Investigator Major Gwen Muskin at 662-592-1395. All calls remain anonymous.
