MS Coast man guilty in deadly bar shooting. ‘All you had to do was leave.’
Charles Ike Mason IV waited until he was outside the County Line Bar in rural Jackson County before grabbing a shotgun and firing into the bar after being thrown out for his behavior, according to witness testimony.
The shooting happened March 9, 2024, after Mason and a friend, Jesse Donovan Holifield, both of Lucedale, went to the bar on Highway 613, just south of the George County line. Holifield is charged as an accessory after the fact to the crime.
At some point, Mason initiated a fight with another customer after singing karaoke. Defense attorney Dustin Thomas described the altercation as a melee, with multiple “regulars” involved.
“While this was certainly a tragedy, this was not first-degree murder,” Thomas said. “It certainly was not.”
Mason was then thrown out of the bar, went to his car, retrieved a shotgun and began firing, according to testimony. State medical examiner, Dr. Staci Turner, testified that the murder victim, Richard Allen Davis, 28, died at the scene. He had two gunshot wounds.
The details emerged during Mason’s trial this week in Jackson County Circuit Court on one count of first-degree murder and four counts of aggravated assault. After an hour of deliberations, the jury convicted Mason on all counts.
Before sentencing, the murder victim’s aunt, Ramona Busby, addressed the court, through tears.
“I just wanted to say how much my nephew’s death has hurt my family,” Busby said. “My sister, his mom, is not here with us today. She has grieved for two years, and I believe she would still be here today if his life had not been taken.
“Our family has not been the same since that day,” she said.
Afterward, Circuit Judge Calvin Taylor sentenced Busby to the mandatory life sentence for murder plus 20 years for each of the four counts of aggravated assault. He ordered the sentences to run concurrently.
“There is not much I’m going to say,” Taylor told Mason. You had just turned 21. You were just starting your life, barely got started. Mr. Davis was in the same boat. He just barely got his life started.”
Taylor called the crime “senseless,” and told Mason, “All you had to do was leave, and you didn’t.”
Assistant district attorneys Carolyn Lewis and Ann Morgan Sullivan prosecuted the case.
During closing arguments, Lewis said Mason was solely responsible for the violence.
“This was a mutual combat between this defendant and another person at the bar,” Lewis said. “He went up to Christopher Moody and told him, ‘Let’s take it outside.’”
Lewis rejected the defense’s characterization of Mason as some sort of victim.
“No one was responsible for that but Mason,” she said. “He started that. He initiated that. He wanted to go outside. He wanted to fight, so this isn’t poor old Ike being jumped at the bar.
“That has nothing to do with holding him accountable for getting a gun and firing eight rounds into that bar and killing Mr. Davis,” she said. “This person was causing the disturbance at the bar.”
