Victory A. Watts, a 42-year-old African American man from Meridian, Mississippi, was fatally shot in a house on 5th Street on May 18, 2023. Police discovered his body that Thursday morning; the victim died from a gunshot wound to the head. Officers treated the residence as the scene of a homicide and secured the neighborhood while investigators worked the case.

Around 8:30 a.m. the same morning, an Exxon gas station on Highway 19 North near 5th Street was robbed. Authorities quickly linked the two incidents and identified a single individual they believed responsible for both the shooting and the robbery. Meridian police named 33-year-old Antonyo D. Mason as a suspect and charged him with murder in Watts’s death and with robbery in connection with the Exxon incident; bond amounts were later set.

Watts is remembered on memorial pages as another life lost to gun violence in Meridian. If anyone knew Victory Watts or has information about the events of May 18, 2023, please come forward.