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Stephanie George was about to find out how little evidence the Jackson Police Department had when it charged her son with capital murder.
Sitting on a wooden bench in an austere Hinds County courtroom, Stephanie gripped her father’s hand and tried to make eye contact with 20-year-old Cortez George. He stood in the jury box with the other jail detainees, wearing glasses, shackles and a jumpsuit that swallowed his slight frame.
Stephanie had known for years that her son Cortez was involved in “the street life.” But she was still shocked by the alleged crimes: Shooting into an occupied vehicle, aggravated assault and capital murder.
She hoped that Cedric Vaughn, an officer in JPD’s robbery-homicide division, would provide some answers when he took the stand on Aug. 6, 2024.
The short hearing would lead to even more questions.
The officer testified that six months earlier, he had been assigned to investigate a terrifying killing: Anthony Davis, a 23-year-old Enterprise employee and musician who went by the moniker DJ Choo, was driving on North State Street when a bullet struck his eye. He crashed into the raised railroad tracks just south of Beasley-Adkins.
Eyewitnesses said the bullets came from a pair of cars that were chasing each other and shooting.
“Throughout the investigation, we interviewed a lot of people, conducted a lot of interviews, and came to the conclusion that Mr. George was in one of those vehicles that was involved in the murder of Mr. Davis,” Vaughn told the prosecutor, according to a transcript of the hearing.
A witness had even picked 5-foot-5 Cortez George out of a lineup. But where was this witness during the shooting?
“He was at home at the time,” Vaughn testified.
Jackson Police Department headquarters, located at 327 East Pascagoula Street in downtown Jackson, Wednesday, March 18, 2026. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“I guess one of the friends that associated with Mr. George ended up calling him and telling him everything that happened,” he added.
“I’m just trying to get this straight,” defense attorney Shaun Yurtkuran asked on cross-examination. “So the only evidence that you do have against my client is a friend of a friend. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct,” Vaughn responded.
“And you don’t know who that person is?”
“That’s correct.”
With that, the case unraveled. Judge Johnnie McDaniels discharged Cortez from custody.
“To the victims of this incident, I think our system owes you an apology for such a poorly investigated matter,” the judge said.
A common and confounding experience
Stephanie didn’t fully understand what had happened, but she knew Cortez was coming home.
Seven months later, when he was shot and killed in a shooting spree after Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade in downtown Jackson, the lingering questions would become harder to ignore.
In the wake of Cortez’s death, Stephanie became one of many Jacksonians who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence and will likely wonder for the rest of their lives what went wrong.
The numbers have grown since the pandemic, when Jackson registered as one of the deadliest cities in America, according to interviews with families of homicide victims, community advocates and local defense attorneys.
Family members pull away from each other. Friends fall out of touch. Witnesses avoid people who want the truth.
And in many cases, the police investigations have left families frustrated, said Felecia Marshall, a Jackson mother whose daughter was killed in 2017.
Marshall founded Grant Me Justice, a nonprofit that counsels families of homicide victims, in 2021 after her daughter’s killer was convicted. Since then, she’s formed a core group of 27 families that meets regularly to discuss their grief. Of those, just two, she said, have seen their cases result in conviction.
“A majority of families will say the same,” she said. “Given information was not acted upon. Or the killer was arrested and released for lack of evidence.”
Over the years, Marshall has participated in several meetings with JPD and families inside police headquarters – often the result, she said, of families who repeatedly call for updates. She said she’s never heard investigators offer specifics for why a case goes cold.
“We’re not trying to make them angry,” she said. “We just want them to do what they say they do on the side of their cars. We just want them to serve.”
Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney, left, is introduced during a Pearl River Flood Risk Management Project press conference on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Pearl. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
In response to a detailed list of questions for this story, a JPD spokesperson wrote the case involving Davis’s killing was still open. But at her first City Council meeting, RaShall Brackney, the new police chief, said she was requiring detectives to meet with families in an effort to motivate them to be more responsive to community concerns.
Matt Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, said the criminal justice system, consisting of checks and balances, is supposed to incentivize police to bring solid cases.
But high caseloads and understaffing in the homicide division tip the scales.
“The Jackson police should do a better job,” he said. “But life isn’t ‘Law and Order.’ The police aren’t that thorough, the prosecution isn’t that detailed, and the judges aren’t that strict in following the law.”
How Cortez became a mystery
To his friends, Cortez was known as “Tez.” His family called him “Tezzy.”
In high school, he started going by a new nickname – 74. With G being the seventh letter and D the fourth, Stephanie knew the number represented the Gangster Disciples, a street gang founded in Chicago with a presence in Jackson.
She changed his name in her phone to “Headache.”
He stopped going to class. He lost the glasses, pierced his ears and got a pair of crystal studs. He wouldn’t smile, preferring a nonchalant grimace. He started wearing skinny jeans with the tag attached, a popular style among boys his age.
Stephanie George, right, takes a selfie with her son, Cortez George, to mark his 21st birthday on Jan. 29, 2024. Credit: Courtesy Stephanie George
Not long after he turned 18, Cortez was arrested. In 2022, officers in the Clinton Police Department’s Narcotics Division cornered the teen as he was fleeing an Airbnb booked with a fraudulent credit card. According to court documents, Cortez admitted to owning a black backpack containing .40 caliber bullets and a mask.
He spent a month in the Raymond Detention Center. Then the case was dropped. Stephanie said he wouldn’t talk about it. “He was a very hard shell to crack.”
Stephanie knew Cortez wanted to make money. He wanted to buy his dream car: A Honda with a sunroof. He’d take small jobs at Kroger, McDonald’s, Raising Canes.
But work didn’t keep him safe. In 2023, he was shot in the back in a park in Jackson. His sister called Stephanie from the hospital, asking for Cortez’s Social Security number, then hung up. When Cortez’s grandmother called her to ask if news of the shooting was accurate, Stephanie learned she was the last in her family to know.
“Is what true?” she said.
After that, Cortez wouldn’t leave home without a gun. Stephanie thought he was filming rap videos with a group he called his “brothers,” the “Dead-End Boys” who named themselves after the dead-end street in northeast Jackson where detectives claimed the first shots that led to Davis’s death were fired.
‘Some beef’
Detectives believed the shooting chase went down like this: A 19-year-old named Martravious Douglas drove to Cortez’s home to shoot him. Cortez and his two friends jumped into a stolen Chrysler 300. They chased Douglas through the residential streets.
This scenario came out in court a week later during the preliminary hearing for one of Cortez’s friends, 22-year-old Malik Ray, the alleged driver of the Chrysler. By then, Douglas and Cortez’s other friend, 19-year-old Aiden Mayes, had also been released from custody.
Detectives shine a light at Anthony Davis’s car on the side of North State Street on Jan. 29, 2024. Credit: Courtesy Jeremiah Howard
Local media had taken notice of the case. There were cameras in the courtroom. And this time, the detective came prepared.
JPD Det. Stephanie Burse said the shooting happened because the young men belonged to rival gangs. Douglas was allegedly a member of a gang called “4sk.” Mayes, Cortez and Ray apparently belonged to a gang called “2500” and, days before, had shot someone that Douglas was affiliated with.
“The 2500 Gang and 4sk Gang have some beef with each other,” she said.
Though more detailed, this account confuses Stephanie. She’d never heard of 2500 – and as far as she knew, the Dead-End Boys were not a gang.
“They would stand at the end of the street with a microphone and a tripod and they would record the videos,” she said.
More importantly, Stephanie says she was home the day of the alleged shooting. She remembers, because Jan. 29 was Cortez’s 20th birthday. She came home from work around 3 p.m. and he was there with another friend. Plus, she said her Ring doorbell would’ve recorded any shots fired that night. (She no longer has the footage after deleting her account, she said).
But JPD didn’t ask her any questions when they barged through her front door with a search warrant.
No-billed, no explanation
Had JPD uncovered more evidence, a grand jury might have indicted Cortez for capital murder in Davis’s death.
If he was guilty, Stephanie wonders if that was the intervention her son needed. The preliminary hearing had seemed like a wake-up call. He stopped going out, saying he wanted to keep “a low profile.” He got a job, a girlfriend, the Honda he’d always wanted, a driver’s license. He decided to apply to trade school to become a diesel mechanic.
By spring, Cortez was dead, struck in the head, back and hip by bullets in a shooting that injured seven other people.
Within days, the state-run Capitol Police arrested two brothers for the shooting. Stephanie said the police assured her they were holding the people responsible for her son’s death.
Then, four months later, Capitol Police arrested a third suspect, an 18-year-old named Kanye Davis, a friend of Cortez who is not related to Anthony Davis.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones, left, listens as Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey speaks during the Capital City Revitalization Committee meeting at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
It would take nearly a year for the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office to present the case to the grand jury. The brothers were cleared while Davis was indicted earlier this year.
Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey told Mississippi Today he was blindsided by the grand jury’s decision not to indict, so he decided to review the case file. He said it was “unreal how great of a case” his officers had compiled, despite numerous challenges: Lack of video footage of the shooting, few cooperating witnesses.
For Stephanie, the failed indictments only added to her list of questions about her son’s life and what happened on that fateful Saturday.
Cortez rarely carried his ID with him, she said. But when she was at the hospital, an officer handed it to her and said she didn’t need to identify his body. It was as if Cortez had done her one last favor.
‘I don’t know the streets’
Earlier this year, Stephanie moved to a new house in Pearl, where she had been planning to go shortly before Cortez was killed.
In the room that would’ve been his, she placed a lifesize cutout of Cortez. He’s wearing his favorite cross necklace, a black Ralph Lauren puffer jacket and a pair of gray skinny jeans with the tag attached. Stephanie pinned a $100 bill to it, one of the few things from his body that she got back.
The room doesn’t soothe Stephanie. Instead, she said it’s a “harsh reminder” of the pointless questions that won’t bring her son back.
Why did Cortez go to the parade that day? Who started shooting? Was her son targeted? Did his friend really betray him? She knew a stranger had taken Cortez to the hospital – why did his friends abandon him? Why didn’t she get his necklace back?
“What else can I do? I don’t have any leads,” she said, sitting in her living room, cradling her arms around herself. “I don’t know the streets.”
Cortez George, center, at the 2025 Hal’s St. Paddy’s Day Parade in downtown Jackson, hours before he would be killed in a shooting spree. Credit: Courtesy Stephanie George
She knows there are people who have the answers. Cortez’s friends would be able to say if they really did take Davis’s life, but with potential indictments hanging over their heads, there’s no incentive for them to talk.
Kanye Davis could say what happened before Cortez was killed, but he’s facing trial. Stephanie plans to attend the proceedings, which could be years from now.
Her other questions have no answers. Cortez had always wanted to leave Jackson. What if they had moved to Florida like they’d always talked about? What if she had moved to Pearl a month, a week, or even days sooner?
“The fact is, I just don’t know,” she said, “because nobody is telling me anything.”
The only artwork on her walls are pictures of Cortez. His high school graduation. His 19th birthday, and his 21st. (She doesn’t know why she didn’t take a photo of him on his 20th birthday – the day of Davis’s killing.) And her favorite: A selfie where he is looking up at the camera, smiling a huge, toothy grin.
A year after his death, she’s still finding new pictures. Recently, someone sent her one of Cortez from the day of the parade. He’s standing in the middle of a group of guys, staring off into the distance, a focused expression on his face. It looks like he just saw someone. She wonders who he sees. She wonders if she’ll ever know.
