Family, friends and supporters are demanding justice nearly three years after a shooting that almost took the life of a Black FedEx delivery man. They are expressing guarded optimism after the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office confirmed October 11 that the two White men accused of firing on his delivery van in Brookhaven, Miss., will return for a retrial next year.
Citing errors with the initial police investigation, the judge declared a mistrial in 2023. The time and date of the new trial has yet to be announced.
Known locally as the “FedEx shooting case,” on January 24, 2022, D’Monterrio Gibson, 24, a uniformed FedEx employee, driving his regular delivery route, made a stop on an isolated rural road to deliver a package.
It was then where a father, Gregory Case, and his son, Brandon Case, allegedly fired multiple shots at Mr. Gibson, after delivering a package to the father’s residence that evening.
“Anytime we’re approaching a house that orders a package, it’s not just driving slow for (the sake of) driving slow, but anytime you approach the house you might be close to, you slow down so you might find the house,” Mr. Gibson told The Final Call in a telephone interview.
“We send emails out, when we load a package, they give you an update, ‘your order has been put on a truck and your package is out for delivery.’ They let people know, so there’s no way possible that if they ordered the package, they didn’t know it was coming,” he said.
Working while Black
After delivering a package to their residence, Mr. Gibson shared with The Final Call that he felt threatened by the assailants, causing him to fear for his life and to flee after an attempt was made to block his truck from exiting.
“As I was leaving, I had seen this white vehicle approaching me, so I turned around and proceeded to leave the driveway, but he swerved in front of me. My instincts instantly kicked in and I swerved around him and drove down about two or three houses,” Mr. Gibson explained.
“Then, there was another gentleman pointing a gun in my window, motioning with his hand to stop. I hid down behind the steering wheel and I swerved around him, and that’s when he starts firing shots into my vehicle.”
He recounted how several bullets penetrated his contracted FedEx delivery vehicle, even striking packages within his truck as he escaped from the Case’s, and how he was also chased to a nearby highway. Mr. Gibson said the position of one box behind his seat, containing a television, prevented one of the bullets from striking him in the back of his head.
“It’s been just a hard journey, the last two years, just trying to get people to even take this case serious,” D’Monterrio Gibson said. He spoke about the constant protests and marches bringing people to rural Mississippi just to keep attention on his demand for justice and accountability.
“We had protested for nine months in Brookhaven, when they were trying to throw the case out. I had been feeling defeated the last two years,” he said. “But just the fact that I get to tell my story again is like a sigh of relief, it’s like I’ve got hope again.”
Mr. Gibson’s mother, Sharon McClendon, told The Final Call that getting word that her first-born son almost lost his life for just doing his job put them both into “panic mode,” and that getting shot by customers to whom one delivers packages is the farthest thing from one’s mind when being hired by a reputable company.
“FedEx did not want him to talk to the media,” Ms. McClendon said of the violent 2022 encounter. “They told him, do not speak with the media, but I convinced him to speak with media, and this needs to be brought out, because FedEx was not going to pursue any charges. They weren’t going to do anything,” she alleges.
“They still have yet to speak to my son, they have not spoken to my son; they have not apologized to my son, they did not come to his aid; (but) they did fire him because he was under therapy care, and is still under therapy care,” Ms. McClendon explained.
“The feds did come down to take pictures of the bullet holes in the van, that was their only concern,” she said. It was only after she reached out to the office of Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) that the FBI became involved, she said.
Mr. Gibson is being represented by lead attorney and Mississippi native Carlos E. Moore, a former president of the National Bar Association and municipal judge, who assembled a team to ensure justice is properly served. He said that while Mr. Gibson is fortunate to have survived the encounter, he also said how the shooting was handled, was unacceptable.
The Final Call contacted the corporate office for FedEx but received no response.
“He is blessed to be alive,” Atty. Moore said while critiquing how FedEx managed the immediate outcomes related to the shooting. “I believe he had a guardian angel with him on that evening, otherwise he would be dead.
The manager, on the phone, when he told her that he was being shot at, she said just try to get to the station as soon as possible, and then put him on the same route that next day.” Atty. Moore also spoke about the manager’s seeming lack of concern for Mr. Gibson’s safety and well-being at that time.
“He works it two days, it was too much on him, he couldn’t bear it, and then they sent him home, but get this, without pay,” Atty. Moore said of the immediate aftermath of the shooting. “He’s at home, without pay, on unpaid leave, because he could not handle the stress of going on that same route.”
Bringing nationwide attention to the “FedEx shooting case,” and issues of White paranoia, a volatile political season, and a mindset of shoot-first-and-ask-questions later among an increasingly angry and highly armed American populace.
Mr. Gibson’s legal team also brought attention to corporate responsibility, corporate policies, and issues specific to Black people, such as those in rural Mississippi, when violence or threats of violence occur while working in hostile or anti-Black environments.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023, Brookhaven, Miss., had a total population of 11,571 people, with 56.7 percent being Black and 41.4 percent being White.
“Jogging while Black, driving while Black, working while Black, at some point there’s going to be a message to this nation that young Black men don’t have to play ‘the devil’s advocate,’ young Black men don’t have to worry about the fact that by virtue of the color of their skin.
The texture of their hair, that they have to always be the ones that could have possibly scared a White person,” said Atty. James Bryant of the Los Angeles-based Cochran Law Firm at the opening of the legal team’s February 2022 news conference in Brookhaven.
“On the heels of the death of Ahmaud Arbery (see Final Call Vol. 39 No. 32), we could have had the same situation here,” Atty. Bryant insisted. “What we’ve seen over the last several years is this emboldened White vigilante that believes that he can tell a Black man to do whatever he wants and if that Black man doesn’t listen,
We’re going to take him back to the ’50s or the ’40s, we’re going to shoot him, we’re going to assassinate him, and we’re going to make them pay, and why? Simply because he was the one who was afraid and he didn’t want to lose his life,” he said.
Separate or suffer the consequences
In his monumental book, “Message To The Blackman in America,” the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns about the nature of Caucasians, the violence they inflict on Black people, and teaches that the best and only solution for Black people for freedom, justice and equality is separation from their open enemy.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, his National Representative, stated, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that one of the things that must be done, in this time, is that we must be separated from our former slave masters and their children—because time will prove that they will become more and more disagreeable to live with in peace.”
The Minister made this declaration in 2013 in part 39 of his 58-week lecture series, “The Time and What Must Be Done,” which was titled, “Can Black and White Live Together in Peace?”
Nation of Islam Student Minister Abram Muhammad of Mosque No. 78 in nearby Jackson, Miss., told The Final Call that there is no excuse to be uninformed of the time and what must be done.
“When you have become so dependent on your enemy, it makes it easier for him to make up laws, rules, regulations, and ordinances and even cultures that will determine how your life is lived because you’re not willing to get up and do something for self, you’re not willing to get up and unite with your own and accept your own and be yourself,” Student Minister Muhammad explained.
“You want to take the docile approach of begging, picketing, petitioning, pleading for your enemy to do something that the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has taught us that is not even in his nature to do.
“The Minister has also gone on further to say that we often take acts of kindness for one’s nature when simply they may have just played a few acts of kindness, but overall, it’s not in their nature to give us what we deserve, and the only way to get that is a separation,” he said.
“That separation is deeper than just moving into a community of your own. I understand the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad that separation is a mental and spiritual one that we have to separate from believing that we have to love our enemy more than we love ourselves,” Student Minister Muhammad insisted.
The continuing failure of Black people to separate will come with huge consequences.
“Unfortunately, race relations will continue to get worse because the government just cannot provide enough food, clothing, shelter and jobs, or justice, for us.
And as we sit around, waiting for somebody else to do this for us—and demanding what we feel are our basic rights as so-called citizens—we are making our former slave masters and their children more angry with us; and thus, they are becoming more disagreeable to live with in peace,” Minister Farrakhan stated.
“That’s why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “We must be separated if we don’t want to continue to suffer great loss,” he added.
