Church MASSACRE – Six People Killed, Including Priest

Police car with flashing lights at night.

One quiet Mississippi county just became a test case for how far a community, a prosecutor, and a justice system are willing to go when evil walks straight through the front door of a family home and into a church.

Story Snapshot

Six relatives, including a 7-year-old girl and a beloved pastor, were killed across three small-town scenes in a single January night.
Prosecutors signal they will seek capital-murder charges and the death penalty against 24-year-old suspect Daricka M. Moore.
The rampage turned a low-crime rural county into a national stage for debates over family violence, faith, and punishment.
Authorities still have no clear motive, leaving survivors and voters to fill in the blanks with their own hard questions.

A Rural Night Turns Into A Family And Faith Nightmare

Clay County, Mississippi, is the kind of place where people still recognize trucks by the sound of the engine long before they see the headlights. On a Friday night in January, that familiarity shattered when investigators say 24-year-old Daricka M. Moore moved methodically from a family trailer to a cousin’s house to a small white-frame church, leaving six relatives dead and a community suddenly aware that horror no longer respects rural distance.

Deputies say the first scene was the family mobile home on a dirt road, where Moore’s father, 67-year-old Glenn Moore, his 33-year-old brother Quinton, and his 55-year-old uncle, Willie Ed Guines, were shot and killed. In conservative communities, the home is supposed to be the safest fortress, run by parents, anchored by elders. Here, the alleged killer is not an outsider or a stranger; he shares the last name on the mailbox.

The Second Door Kicked In: Children, Sexual Violence, And A Split-Second Mercy

Investigators say Moore then took his brother’s truck and drove a few miles to a cousin’s house. Inside that home, authorities allege he forced his way in, attempted sexual battery, then put a gun to the head of a 7-year-old girl—his own young cousin—and pulled the trigger. A younger child reportedly had a gun pressed to the head as well, but survived; Sheriff Eddie Scott cannot yet say whether the trigger failed or mercy interrupted the moment.

The mother and a third child watched this unfold and were left physically unharmed but psychologically marked. Anyone who has raised children understands why that detail changes the story. This is not just about homicide statistics; this reaches into what American conservatives often call the “domestic church” of the family. Allegations of attempted sexual battery in the middle of a killing spree complicate any simple narrative about mental breakdown and push the crime into the realm of calculated depravity.

When Violence Walks Onto Church Grounds

According to law enforcement, Moore then drove to the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus, a simple white church framed by fields and woods, where some members of the Moore family worship. There, he allegedly broke into a residence on church property and killed Pastor Rev. Barry Bradley and his brother, Samuel Bradley, before taking one of their vehicles and leaving the scene. The Bradleys lived in nearby Columbus but spent weekends serving this tiny congregation.

Violence inside a sanctuary cuts deeper than most crime scenes. For many in rural Mississippi, church sits at the intersection of family, community, and moral order. When a relative crosses that boundary and kills the pastor who ministers to his extended family, the question is no longer just “What happened?” but “What broke inside a person raised under the same sermons the rest of us heard?” Authorities admit they still do not know why Moore did this and continue to interview him.

Death Penalty, Common Sense Justice, And A Politically Exposed Prosecutor

Moore was arrested about four and a half hours after the first 911 call, stopped at a roadblock near Cedarbluff with a rifle and handgun in his possession. He now sits in the Clay County jail without bond, facing murder charges that District Attorney Scott Colom expects to upgrade to capital murder, with an announced intention to seek the death penalty. Under Mississippi law, multiple victims and murders committed during certain felonies can justify capital punishment.

Colom, who is also running for the U.S. Senate, calls pursuing the death penalty in this case “the right thing to do,” while insisting his office has the resources to handle a capital trial alongside his campaign. Voters who value law and order, personal responsibility, and protection of the innocent will likely see a straightforward alignment: if the allegations are proven, patricide, fratricide, the murder of a child, a pastor, and attempted sexual battery, then the maximum lawful penalty reflects both community outrage and common-sense consequences.

A Low-Crime County Forced To Confront Hard Questions

Clay County is not Jackson or Gulfport. Local outlets describe it as a relatively low-crime area where six killings in one night across three scenes stands out as “about as bad as it gets,” in Sheriff Scott’s words. Residents now face questions that echo far beyond Mississippi: how does a family miss warning signs, what role do guns play when wielded by a determined attacker, and how should a justice system respond when no motive makes moral sense?

Authorities say they have found no evidence of additional shooters, no ties to gangs or ideological groups, and no published history of serious prior criminal charges for Moore so far. The absence of a neat motive leaves space for speculation, but facts still matter. Conservative instincts typically resist turning singular atrocities into instant broad-brush policy. Yet this case underscores a quieter, harder issue: when violence erupts inside the closest bonds, family and church, no law, no sheriff’s office, and no Senate campaign can substitute for the daily work of culture, accountability, and moral formation inside the homes and pews where this rampage began and ended.