Mother walks south Lee County scene of son's year-old fatal shooting to keep case alive
Michael Braun
If steps could bring her son back, Daphine Renee Perkins would walk forever.
Marcus Hood died the day after Thanksgiving 2016 from gunshots that his mother said her son suffered at Gulf Coast Town Center. Two others were injured.
On Sunday, Perkins and about three dozen family members, friends and others walked around the expansive parking lot at the shopping center to highlight and bring attention to her son's killing.
"Thank you all for coming," Perkins said as everyone gathered into a wide prayer circle in the Target parking lot. "This means so much to me. This has a been a very long and hard year for my family and myself."
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Killings like those that claimed Perkins' son need to be prevented, she said.
"This has got to stop," she said. "There was a murder just a few days ago. When you lose a child, you feel it all over again."
During the group's memorial walk from Target to the area of Rack Room Shoes, where the actual shooting occurred, Perkins said there's nothing she wouldn't do to bring her son back.
"I would walk to Hell and back," she said.
However, she acknowledged that what he was involved in and those he associated with likely contributed to his killing.
"He was hanging around with the wrong people," Perkins said. "It was his time."
Perkins said the father of two – whose father died in a fight when he was just an infant – would have been 29 on Sunday.
Perkins said after Hood was shot six times, once in the head, her son got into a car with a second man and they made it more than 4 miles away to Estero Parkway and Cypress View Drive, where the vehicle’s tires blew out.
Other than a one-year-old news release, there has been little information provided on the case, which remains unsolved.
Hood's sister, Jaquesha "Doosie" Hood, 33, just wants to know what happened to her baby brother and why.
"I want more people to speak out about it," she said. "They're forgetting about it."
In a show of support for Perkins, Angela McClary, organizer of Parents of Murdered Children, participated in the walk.
"I wanted to support the family and recognize that a murder has taken place," she said. "It just brings back memories of my son. Our children are crying out from the grave for justice."
McClary started the group after her son, Deonte Redding, was shot and killed. Redding and his half-brother, Zachary Blue, died in a parked vehicle on South Drive in 2014.
The group drove in a motorcade from Gulf Coast to place flowers at the spot along Cypress View near Estero Parkway where the car broke down and Hood was found.
The group later moved to Lakes Regional Park and hosted a celebration of Hood's life.
Darvis McBride, a childhood friend of Hood's, said he came to pay his respects.
"Hopefully, something will come out," he said. "There are too many (murders) to keep up with."
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