What started as a dispute over a wandering cow left two people shot Monday, including a Noxubee County Sheriff’s Department deputy and woman accused of opening fire on law enforcement.
Noxubee Sheriff Terry Grassaree said Deputy Eddie Franklin was not seriously hurt and was treated and released from a local hospital.
Grassaree says 53-year-old Elizabeth Guyton of Brooksville was wounded and taken to a Jackson hospital. Guyton is listed in a regular room at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Calls to her room this morning went unanswered. Her condition is not known.
Bill Randall, a Noxubee County farmer, has been renting a piece of land next to Guyton’s home along Fairview Road for several years. Randall, in an interview with The Dispatch this morning, said he was penning cattle Sunday, preparing the steer to be shipped to Kansas. A calf got loose from the herd and ran through a fence onto Guyton’s property, Randall said. As Randall and several men tried to catch the calf, Guyton came out of her home and began yelling and shooting at the men, telling them they were trespassing, Randall said.
“She came out raising hell at us, shooting at us,” he said.
Randall said he yelled back, telling Guyton they were trying to catch the lost calf and would soon be off her property. However, Guyton kept shooting, according to Randall.
The men then ran the calf into another neighbor’s property to avoid being shot, Randall said. He called 911.
Noxubee County Sheriff’s Department deputies came to the property but by then, Guyton had gone back inside her home and would not answer the door, Randall said. Deputies left the scene.
Randall said deputies returned to Guyton’s home Monday morning. Randall described the home as a “shack” without electricity or running water.
“The deputies came back with us, they went back up trying to talk to her, trying to reason with her,” he said. “She still had the gun with her and it escalated from there. They couldn’t get her out.”
After an hours-long standoff Monday, deputies left the home, Randall said. Grassaree said deputies left, hoping Guyton would turn herself in, but they returned when she allegedly threatened to shoot another neighbor.
When deputies left, Guyton emerged from the home, armed with a weapon, according to Randall.
When deputies returned to the home, they got into a face-off with Guyton, according to weekly Macon newspaper, The Macon Beacon.
Grassaree says when a deputy tried to shoot her with a stun gun she opened fire. The sheriff said an unidentified deputy shot Guyton.
According to the Beacon’s Facebook page, deputies approached Guyton from behind. Guyton grabbed a rifle and began firing at the officers. Deputy Eddie Franklin, who was hit in his shoulder area, returned fire, along with other law enforcement. Guyton was struck at least three times in the legs and torso, according to The Macon Beacon.
Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department Commander Archie Williams, who was at the scene Monday, confirmed this morning that Franklin was released from Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle Monday night.
The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce is the lead agency in the case, according to Warren Strain, spokesperson with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
“The department of agriculture is the lead on that deal because there is livestock involved in it,” Strain said this morning. “MBI is acting in a supporting role. It started with someone trying to retrieve cattle from the property and it escalated.”
Guyton maintains a website that is critical of the U.S. government.
“The GOP is pushing social welfare policies that can only be described of as genocidal, a post Civil Rights Era white backlash,” she wrote on the website in August.
She also wrote: “Silence, patience and waiting are over. Target the defense contractors and energy extraction corporations as they have targeted democracy, and remove the extremists right from political office as they have removed millions of Americans from living productive lives, and disrupt national security as they have disrupted us all.”
Les and Shelia Decker live across the street from Guyton. Sheila Decker said Guyton came over and introduced herself when she moved in. Then, her behavior took a turn. Guyton, Decker said, claimed the family was “watching her and that we shot at her.”
The couple ignored those incidents.
“I can’t say we ever felt threatened by her, but when we saw some of the notes she posted on her gate, we started to be a little cautious,” Decker said. “She would post anti-government things, notes about not trespassing on her property, some anti-Ku Klux Klan stuff. There weren’t any notes directed at us, but it was enough to make us a little leery.”
The state Department of Agriculture and Commerce was unable to confirm Guyton’s condition this morning.
Dispatch reporter Slim Smith and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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