Music video helps identify Canton men found guilty in ‘military type assault’

CANTON, Miss. (WLBT) - Six Canton men, including three teenagers, pled guilty to a gang related shooting committed last year.

According to District Attorney Bubba Bramlett, on February 12, 2022, officers from the Canton Police Department were dispatched to reports of multiple shots fired on North West Street in Canton.

When officers arrived, they found a man who had been shot and a vehicle that had received extensive damage due to multiple gun shots into the car.

Video from a local gas station showed four cars pull into the gas station minutes before the shooting.

More footage from nearby houses showed the same four vehicles surrounding the victim’s car and at least two shooters firing shots into the car in a close range assault after the suspects all left the gas station.

During the investigation, police discovered a music video that was shot hours before the shooting with the six suspects wearing the same clothes that can be seen in the surveillance tapes from the gas station.

Officers also uncovered a photograph of the above individuals standing around the grave of Jaihlen Sims, a young man that had been murdered four months prior during a drive-by shooting.

Joseph Warren Jr., 27, Cortez Robinson, 17, Cordarious Johnson, 16, LeChristopher Smith, 19, Teravium Davis, 32, and Ahkeem Lewis, 18, all residents of Canton, pled guilty to multiple charges stemming from the 2022 ambush.

Warren pled guilty to aggravated assault, shooting into a vehicle, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and being a felon in possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to serve a total of 29 years at the Mississippi Department of Corrections facility.

Robinson, Johnson, and Smith pled guilty to aggravated assault, shooting into a vehicle, and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and will serve 25 years in prison.

Davis pled guilty to one count of aggravated assault and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Lewis was sentenced to five years for a count of conspiracy.

Judge Dewey Arthur said that the video showed a “military type assault on the victim’s vehicle,” and that he had never seen such a “chilling” video.

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