What happened to Corri Howard? ‘We were hoping we’d find him alive. But it wasn’t that way.’

Angela Minor can still picture it: Corri Howard sitting in a chair in her Pascagoula home, watching videos and sharing food with her family, on the last day his loved ones would see him alive.

Howard, 36, was like a son to her. Over the last 20 years, she had watched him become an adult with her children.

Later that evening, a Friday, Howard and one of Minor’s sons left to go to a bar in D’Iberville. She learned what happened later that night from her son, who declined to speak to the Sun Herald on the record.

Heading home after midnight, Howard pulled off Interstate 10 and started driving south down Mississippi 613. Police started following them. Howard had a gun in the car, and he had previously spent time in prison for possession of a firearm by a felon. His roommate and close friend, Lametra Danielle Bilbo, told the Sun Herald Howard didn’t want to go back to jail.

Howard accelerated. He sped down Magnolia Street and whipped onto Howze, across from Magnolia Middle School. Then he jumped out of the still-moving car and ran.

The car rolled to a stop near the fence around the tennis courts. Minor’s son saw police officers run after him behind a home. When he realized no one was coming to talk to him, he got out of the car and walked away.

A few hours later, he called his mom and told her what had happened. Together they returned to Howze Street to search for Howard. They left without finding anything.

“We was hoping we’d find him alive,” she said. “But it wasn’t that way.”

On Thursday, Howard’s body was found in a marshy area behind a home on Howze Street, not far from where he first fled his car. An autopsy conducted by the state medical examiner on Tuesday ruled out homicide but did not determine the cause or manner of death, said Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd. Howard’s family plans to seek a second autopsy. Howard also took medication to control a medical condition that caused seizures.

Because of the police pursuit that preceded Howard’s death, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations is now conducting an independent investigation. MBI investigators came to the scene after Howard’s body was found, neighbors said. But Minor said neither she nor her son have been contacted by investigators to share what they know.

Keosha Gillett, who lives in the home closest to where Howard’s body was found, saw police the night of the chase. She was also present when Howard’s body was found. She said she has not been contacted by investigators either. Neither have Howard or her son.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, whose agency includes MBI, said he can’t comment on the specifics of an going investigation, including whether investigators have so far conducted any interviews.

“Our approach and thoroughness and the way they handle it will not be any different in this matter versus any other matter,” Tindell told the Sun Herald on Tuesday. “They will interview witnesses as they become available and as they gain knowledge of them.”

A balloon release for Corri Howard

On Monday, Minor, Gillett and about 50 others gathered nearby for a balloon release to honor Howard.

His 13-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter stood in the crowd, along with his fiance, siblings and close family friends. One attendee, who asked to be identified only as Beth, had last seen Howard a decade ago, when she got the last of her three tattoos from him. But she still made a point of coming to the memorial with her three children.

“The impression that he made 10 years ago still stands,” she said.

Counting to three, the group released black and blue balloons and watched them float south, drifting over the backyards where Howard had run, and then over a snaking tributary of the Pascagoula River, and out toward the Mississippi Sound.

“We love you, Corri!” they shouted.

The mourners traded shreds of information they had heard about the search for Howard in the more than five days before he was found. And they exchanged unanswered questions about what had happened to him back behind the homes and yards of a quiet residential street.

“God only has the answers,” said 33-year-old Ashley Walton, a close friend of Howard’s, as she delivered a prayer before the balloon release. “We do not have them.”

Resident describes chase, searches

Gillett, 27, lives just across the street from where the balloon release was held, in a blue house raised on white stilts. Her family’s property is where Howard fled.

Around 1 a.m. last Saturday, she said, she heard the sound of police sirens. When the lights were right outside her home, she went outside to see what was going on. She saw Howard’s white SUV across the street, and Minor’s son walking away from it past the tennis courts.

Gillett said police officers, including a K9 officer, searched the area until about 3 a.m. She saw the officers leave with no sign of the man they were chasing.

“We thought he got away,” she said.

The next morning, Minor and her son arrived and asked to look around. Gillett learned that she knew the man who had disappeared into her backyard. Howard had done her tattoos.

Gillett gave Minor and her son a warning about the terrain.

“We said, ‘If you run back there and you don’t know the path to take, you gonna run into the water,” she said.

They didn’t find anything.

Angela Minor said she also returned on Wednesday around mid-day. Once again, they found nothing.

Many searches before belongings, body found

On Thursday morning, Gillett said, three local women who wanted to help find Howard arrived and asked if they could search the property again. Gillett agreed.

Behind her house, the patchy grass typical of Mississippi backyards gives way to soft, sinking mud and marsh grasses. As the women walked in the grass, someone spotted something no one had noticed on previous searches: a black jacket and a hat. Nearby were four one-dollar bills.

The women called Moss Point police. The officers arrived quickly and also found a chain and ID belonging to Howard, Gillett said.

Then, walking further back into the marsh, an officer spotted Howard’s body.

Counting the initial police pursuit of Howard, police and community members searched the backyard at least four times before Howard’s body was found on Thursday.

Gillett said she finds it difficult to understand how no one saw Howard’s belongings on previous searches, and how the K9 unit failed to find him the night police pursued him.

Moss Point turns over body, dash camera footage

Over his years as head of the Jackson County branch of the NAACP, Curley Clark has helped advocate for a number of Coast families whose sons were killed by police or died in police custody. He can rattle off the names: Touissant Diamon Sims, Marcus Malone, Billey Joe Johnson.

He feels MBI’s investigations of such cases aren’t rigorous.

“The NAACP ends up having to provide a witness list, having to provide contact information,” he said. “It’s like they’re not gonna do no more than the minimum unless they’re pushed by the community, and the NAACP plans to push until justice is served.”

Tindell said investigators can only interview the people they know about, and interviewing witnesses often leads them to other witnesses.

Anyone with information to share regarding Howard’s death can contact Crimestoppers, or call the state’s Department of Public Safety at 601-987-1212.

“Law enforcement doesn’t have a crystal ball,” Tindell said.

In recent years, the Sun Herald has reported on several MBI investigations of fatal shootings by police officers.

Howard’s case is different because his cause of death is still unclear. Tindell said the autopsy finding ruling out homicide won’t affect MBI’s investigation.

Moss Point Deputy Police Chief Jim Roe said his officers never even saw Howard after the pursuit began.

In the other cases the Sun Herald has covered, MBI investigators interviewed witnesses within hours of responding to a scene. They also quickly took statements from people who did not actually see the shooting but had knowledge of events leading up to it.

But interviews also sometimes took place weeks after the shooting. For example, a Biloxi man named Reginald Johnson was shot and killed on Jan. 15, 2021. Documents the Sun Herald obtained from MBI through a public records request show that investigators interviewed at least four people that same day. But three others were not interviewed until February.

Roe told the Sun Herald over the weekend that the department has turned over “hours and hours” of dash and body camera footage to MBI and will share the footage publicly later.

“It’ll plainly show we followed all our procedures and everything was done properly and above-board,” he said. “It’s a tragic, tragic event. But our officers never laid eyes on him, never encountered him. I’ve got all the facts that’ll back it up once we can release it.”

Tindell said that MBI’s investigations of suspicious deaths don’t always yield clear answers.

“Unfortunately sometimes the reality is incidents happen and there’s no solid conclusion as to what exactly happened or who did it,” he said. “That is sometimes limited by the facts that you’re able to discover and ascertain.”