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Cody Earnest

Age : 42

Gender : Male

Race : White

Date : 02/20/2023

Location : 1734 Highway 32

City : Okolona

County : Chickasaw

State : Mississippi

Agency : Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Office

Officer(s) :Unknown

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during traffic stop

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 02/20/2023, Chickasaw County deputies conducted a vehicle stop involving 42-year-old Cody Earnest on Highway 32 near Okolona. Authorities did not publicly disclose the original reason for the stop. During the roadside encounter, deputies engaged Earnest and the interaction escalated to the use of deadly force. Deputies opened fire during the stop and killed him at the scene.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation assumed control of the case immediately, which is standard protocol for officer-involved shootings in Mississippi. Public statements released through regional outlets provided very limited operational detail and did not describe the specific sequence of actions that led deputies to discharge their weapons. Police did not publicly claim that Earnest possessed a firearm or any other weapon in initial reporting, and no weapon description was prominently disclosed in available regional coverage. Based on currently indexed sources, he is believed to have been unarmed, and this has not been publicly disputed by law enforcement in available reporting.
Earnest was described in community coverage as a military veteran, and reporting referenced PTSD as part of his background context, but official law enforcement summaries did not attribute the escalation to a mental health crisis or provide behavioral characterization in investigative statements. The incident appears to have remained a roadside escalation during a traffic stop rather than a pursuit, barricade, or extended tactical event.
Officer identities were not publicly released in early coverage, and no criminal charges against deputies were publicly announced. Mississippi often does not widely publicize final clearance reports, especially in rural counties, which creates long-term documentation gaps in cases such as this. The final prosecutorial outcome was not prominently published in major indexed reporting and is not clearly documented in publicly accessible summaries.
The case received limited regional media coverage only, with few tactical details divulged by law enforcement. No widely documented civil rights lawsuits, wrongful death filings, or major federal litigation tied to the shooting could be located in indexed legal or news records, which otherwise sometimes provide additional forensic narrative in similar cases.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.wtva.com/news/mbi-identifies-man-killed-in-chickasaw-county-officer-involved-shooting/article_e533f094-b1e8-11ed-a6af-c39c7845d1fd.html
https://www.wcbi.com/mbi-investigates-fatal-officer-involved-shooting-in-okolona/