Caught dead at a dogfight: who shot “Peanut” & “Goon”?
Merritt Clifton posted: " Mississippi dogfighting scene rocked by busts, murders, & bloody echoes of the civil rights era COMO & COLLINS, Mississippi––Time and trials will probably tell whether a December 4, 2023 dogfighting bust on Rayburn Road in Como, Mississippi" Animals 24-7
Mississippi dogfighting scene rocked by busts, murders, & bloody echoes of the civil rights era
COMO & COLLINS, Mississippi––Time and trials will probably tell whether a December 4, 2023 dogfighting bust on Rayburn Road in Como, Mississippi had anything to do with a double murder at an alleged dogfight 225 miles straight south on November 25, 2023, on Jones Chapel Road, between Collins and Taylorsville, Mississippi.
Damien Jay Smoot. (Panola County Sheriff's Office photo)
29 battle-scarred pit bulls
Reportedly responding to a hang-up telephone call, the Panola County Sheriff's Office on December 4, 2023 impounded 29 battle-scarred pit bulls, seized alleged dogfighting equipment and 13 vehicles, and arrested Damien Jay Smoot, 37, owner of the property where the pit bulls were found.
Several individuals, many believed to be from out of state, fled the scene.
The location is near the Mississippi state borders with Arkansas and Tennessee.
Reshun Goudy. (Beth Clifton collage)
"Peanut" & "Goon"
On December 22, 2023, Covington County Sheriff Darrell Perkins revealed to media that the November 25, 2023 killings of D'Andre "Peanut" Ducksworth and Reshun "Goon" Goudy had occurred at an alleged dogfight.
The two men, each shot once in the head, were reportedly hauled in the back of a pickup truck to the nearest hospital, where both were pronounced deceased at approximately 12:40 p.m.
Video posted to Facebook on November 25, 2023 showed Ducksworth waving a fistful of paper money, repeatedly shouting "Nightmare on Easy Street," apparently at an outdoor event.
The handlebars of a motorcycle appear in the foreground.
Background: D'Andre Ducksworth displays cash in a photo from a video posted to Facebook the night he was killed at a dogfight. Foreground: close-up of the victim. (Facebook photos)
No witnesses admit to being there
"According to Sheriff Perkins, 50 to 60 people allegedly were at the event when the shooting took place," reported Charles Herrington for WDAM-7 in Laurel, Mississippi.
"I understand there were people from more than just Mississippi there," Perkins told WDAM. "There were other people there. We're getting names every week. We're interviewing people in different parts of the state, different parts of the country."
No murder weapon has been recovered. Family and associates of the victims have named two different alleged suspects, a truck driver from about 40 miles north and a man from New Orleans, but law enforcement has not as yet pointed toward anyone.
(Beth Clifton collage)
$5,000 for information
"Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy are offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the execution-style shooting deaths" of Ducksworth and Goudy, "and information regarding the operators of the animal fighting event," emailed Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy chief executive Wayne Pacelle.
Emphasized Pacelle in a prepared media statement, "Dogfighting is barbaric, almost always bound up with narcotics trafficking, gambling, money laundering, and other crimes. In this case the dogfight was the setting for a double homicide."
Family of Ducksworth and Goudy called upon witnesses to, in Pacelle's words, "step forward and give information to the sheriff to apprehend individuals who will continue to menace the community."
(Beth Clifton collage)
Unenforced pit bull ban
The community includes Collins, the Covington, Mississippi county seat, home to fewer than 2,600 of the 18,300 county residents.
Collins at one time banned both pit bulls and Rottweilers, but if the ordinance remains in effect, it appears to be unenforced.
Reported Trey Howard for WDAM on November 30, 2023, before the circumstances of the Ducksworth and Goudy murders were disclosed, "Goudy and Ducksworth, also known as Peanut, had been friends since high school," when both played for Collins High School Tigers football teams that won back-to-back state championships in 2014-2015.
Jennifer Mcdonald. (Facebook photo)
"I have a lot of rage in me"
"I have a lot of rage in me, because I don't understand why it had to happen to him," Ducksworth's mother Jennifer Hayden Mcdonald told Howard. "Peanut don't hurt nobody. He never hurt nobody. He would never. He never met a stranger. Everybody loved Peanut. I want justice for him. I want any and everybody that played a part in what they did to Peanut to pay for it."
Flash back to April 7, 2012. Edward Lamond Duckworth, adoptive father of D'Andre "Peanut" Ducksworth, and his mother, Jennifer Hayden Mcdonald, were stopped by Georgia state troopers.
"Officers found a dead dog in the car. A necropsy on the dog showed injuries consistent with dog fighting," reported Phillip Rawls of Associated Press.
Ducksworth and Mcdonald later pleaded guilty to having taken a pit bull from Georgia to Lee County, Alabama, for a dogfight on that day.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Hot Coffee
Before Ducksworth and Mcdonald entered their pleas and were sentenced, however, a series of federal raids on alleged dogfighting operations in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia in August 2013 impounded 466 pit bulls, seizing $500,000 in cash.
Thirteen search warrants executed in connection with a 30-count criminal indictment brought the arrests of ten individuals at a location off U.S. Highway 84, near an unincorporated hamlet in Smith called Hot Coffee, south of Taylorsville, about five miles from the Jones Chapel Road scene of the Ducksworth and Goudy murders.
Three of those individuals were William Oneil Edwards, 39, and Robin Stinson, 40, both of Elba, Mississippi, and William Antone Edwards, 42, of Brantley, Mississippi.
(Beth Clifton collage)
"Conspired to promote & sponsor dog fights"
Their arrest warrants alleged, according to Stephanie Nelson of the Andalusia Star News, that "Between 2009 and 2013, the suspects conspired to promote and sponsor dog fights, and conspired to possess, buy, sell, transport and deliver dogs who were involved in dog fighting.
"The indictment also charges the suspects with promoting or sponsoring a dog fight and with possessing, buying, selling, transporting and delivering a dog for fighting purposes," Nelson wrote.
"Additional charges relate to conducting an illegal gambling business," Nelson summarized from a U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama media release.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Three family members of murder victim convicted
A November 13, 2014 sentencing update mentioned that Edward Lamond Ducksworth, then 39, of Decatur, Georgia, received 14 months in prison plus two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy; and that Jennifer Mcdonald, then 36, of Collins, Mississippi, received two months in prison plus two years of supervised release, also after pleading guilty to conspiracy.
"A few minutes after Ducksworth pleaded guilty," Rawls of Associated Press reported, "his mother, 61-year-old Mae Gussie Ducksworth of Decatur, pleaded not guilty to a charge of threatening bodily harm against one of his co-defendants, Jennifer Hayden Mcdonald of Fairburn, Georgia, for providing information to law enforcement.
Mae Gussie Ducksworth, indicted in May 2014 by a federal grand jury, on June 26, 2015 was sentenced to serve three years on probation.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Threatening messages on voice mail
Summarized Kelsey Davis for the Montgomery Advertiser, "According to court documents, federal agents were searching for Edward Ducksworth after he was named in the 60-count dogfighting indictment. Jennifer Mcdonald, Edward's 'on-again, off-again' girlfriend, was also named in the indictment.
"Mcdonald cooperated with authorities, and told them they could find Edward at his mother's house. After Edward was arrested, Mae Gussie called McDonald on her cellphone three times, and left threatening voicemails.
"Court documents indicated that Mcdonald felt threatened because she lived in the same town as some of Mae Gussie's family, specifically Collins, Mississippi, "and because her son," D'Andre 'Peanut' Ducksworth, went to school with some of Mae Gussie's relatives."
(Beth Clifton collage)
Eight men & women out
Sentenced at the same time as Edward Lamont Ducksworth and Jennifer Mcdonald were:
Donnie Anderson, then 50, of Auburn, Alabama, the alleged ringleader of the operation, who received an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy, sponsoring dog fights, possessing a fighting dog, and operating an illegal gambling business;
Demontt Allen, then 38, of Houston, Texas, who received five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and admitting participation in high-stakes dog fights;
Michael Martin, then 56, of Auburn, Alabama, who received a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy and being a felon in possession of firearms;
Irkis Forrest, then 33, of Theodore, Alabama, who received a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy;
Sandy Brown, then 48, of Brownsville, Alabama, who received six months in prison for sponsoring a dog fight; and
William Antone Edwards, then 43, who received one year and one day in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins prohibited all eight individuals from possessing dogs during periods of supervised release following their prison sentences.
Trucking & trafficking
Born in Pensacola, Florida, D'Andre "Peanut" Lamond Ducksworth "lived in Atlanta, Georgia, from birth to the age of 15 when he then moved to Collins, Mississippi," according to his funeral announcement. "He had a special love for dogs."
Graduating from Collins High School in 2016, D'Andre Ducksworth became a truck driver.
His high school classmate and fellow murder victim at a dogfight, Re'Shun Octavius "Shun D" Goudy, 27, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi in Hattiesburg, on July 28, 2020 pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett to "conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine."
(Beth Clifton collage)
No sentencing record
"On February 12, 2019," the U.S. Attorney's Office elaborated, "Reshun Goudy, as part of a conspiracy with others, distributed a quarter pound of methamphetamine. After seizure, the methamphetamine was sent to the DEA crime lab, which analyzed the methamphetamine as 96% pure."
Goudy was to have been sentenced on November 18, 2020 by Judge Starrett, "facing a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $10,000,000 fine," said the U.S. Attorney's Office.
"But there is nothing on his sentencing. He clearly is not in prison if he was killed at a dog fight," observed Julie Marshall, director of media relations for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy.
It is possible that Goudy, like Jennifer Mcdonald earlier, avoided severe penalties by cooperating in some manner with law enforcement.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Long local history of dogfighting
Covington County, where D'Andre Ducksworth and Reshun Goudy were murdered, was known for dogfighting long before Ducksworth's parents were arrested for their involvement.
In September 2006, for example, four Covington County men, including brothers Kelvin Feazell, Terrence Feazell, and Willie Feazell, along with their friend Terrance Price, were arrested in possession of 24 pit bulls, two other dogs, "controlled substances" including methamphetamines and marijuana, an assault rifle, and a submachine gun.
"Many of the dogs had old scars," reported WLBT-TV, of Jackson, Mississippi. "One pit bull had fresh wounds on his legs and neck. All were chained near a 20-by-20 foot fighting pit."
The Feazell brothers were charged with dogfighting; Price was charged with dealing drugs.
Roman Ducksworth Jr.
Rome & Roman Ducksworth
The Ducksworth family, however, has long had a positive reputation in the region.
"Rome Ducksworth owned hundreds of acres of land in Cherry Grove and was one of only 12 blacks who were registered to vote in Smith County," Ben Greenberg of National Public Radio reported in 2016.
Rome Ducksworth's son Corporal Roman Ducksworth Jr., "a military police officer stationed at Fort Richie, Md., was on a bus in Taylorsville, Mississippi, on April 9, 1962," summarized Courtland Milloy for the Washington Post in 2013. "A police officer thought he was a Freedom Rider," in Mississippi to do voter registration, "ordered him off the bus, and fatally shot him."
In truth, Roman Ducksworth Jr., a ten-year U.S. Army veteran, had been granted emergency leave from Fort Richie, Maryland, to visit his wife Melva and their newborn daughter.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Full military honors
Roman Ducksworth Jr. was buried with full military honors and a 16-gun salute at a funeral attended by 2,000 people, mostly from Covington and Smith counties.
In 1989 the Southern Poverty Law Center honored Roman Ducksworth Jr. as a martyr of the civil rights movement with a monument in Washington D.C., designed by Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
However, William Kelly, the police officer who shot Roman Ducksworth Jr., died in 2004 without ever being prosecuted.
Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings and threats drove Roman Ducksworth's widow Melva and child, his sister-in-law Vera Ducksworth, and his nephew Odell out of Mississippi for several decades, though some family members did stay, and others later returned.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Ruby Ducksworth stood up for dog law enforcement
Ruby Ducksworth, of Collins, on September 6, 2019 addressed the Covington County Board of Supervisors about the need for local dog law enforcement.
"One day, I was out by my garbage bin, and little boys were walking their dogs," Ruby Ducksworth testified. "A dog chased me from my garbage bin, and I was running. I yelled to the boy to call the dog back; they thought it was funny that the dog chased me. My neighbor and her son had heard me, and they stopped the dog. He could have killed me."
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
"I have several police reports, and those dogs have come up and destroyed not only my property," Ducksworth said. "They have destroyed another lady's rose garden, and they have torn all the skirting off her trailer. She has cats, and I have cats too. She looked out her window one morning, and there was a dog who had jumped over the 3-foot wall to get to that cat."
"I called the police several times, and one of them told me he couldn't do anything. So, I don't sleep," Ruby Ducksworth said.
With a double murderer at large and dogfighting in the community, quite a few people in Covington and Smith counties may not be sleeping well now.
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