A hefty reward is being offered to anyone who can help law enforcement capture the person responsible for a New Year’s Day gas station shooting that took the lives of three in a small town along the Mississippi-Alabama border.
On the morning of Jan. 1, Rhonda Denson and her boyfriend Lester Campbell were opening the Clark’s gas station in State Line before 6 a.m. A customer, Jason Thornton, was also there when a masked man entered the store and shot both him and Campbell. As the intruder grabbed Thornton’s wallet, Denson locked herself in a backroom. The suspect allegedly broke down the door and dragged her to the front to open the cash register and store’s safe. Upon doing so, he shot her in the face and took the money.
The suspect, who was also wearing gloves at the time of the murders, stole a black Toyota Camry from the store’s parking lot before ditching it four miles away in the nearby Knobtown community.
As there were either no witnesses or no one in the 450-person town has decided to speak up, different parties have joined forces to offer $100,000 in exchange for information leading to the identification of the killer.
This week, the Greene County Board of Supervisors approved $15,000 in reward money to be paired with $10,000 from Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers and Clark Oil, $15,000 from the Town of State Line, and $60,000 from Thornton’s friends and family.
Anyone with relevant information is asked to contact the Greene County Sheriff’s Office at (601) 394-2342 or Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-877-787-5898.
