F E AT U R E S
NEVER FORGOTTEN The tragic death of former Covington assistant police chief and Newton County school board representative Almond Turner in 2019 left a lasting void in the community he faithfully served for decades, but for those who were closest to him, his indelible legacy endures through the countless lives he touched. by GABRIEL STOVALL A year to the day after Almond Turner’s death, it felt no less surreal for those closest to him. No less heartbreaking. No less like an awful nightmare from which one tries to wake. That was how Turner’s son, Dwahn, described the day that he and others gathered around his father’s final resting place to pay tribute to a life that had been inexplicably snuffed out by a family member’s gunfire 365 days earlier in Meridian, Mississippi. “It just still doesn’t seem real,” Dwahn said. “It doesn’t feel like we should even be here.” Perhaps that was because there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding Turner’s death. News outlets reported
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that Christopher Denson—Turner’s nephew—left a birthday party on the night of Nov. 23, 2019, retrieved an AK-47 from his vehicle and returned to fire some six shots, striking and fatally wounding the former Covington assistant police chief in the head and chest. Typically in such cases, more information begins to trickle down to the victim’s family after a few weeks or months pass: details like motive, a plea or a trial date and word on possible punishment. All of it helps to provide a semblance of closure. A year later, however, the Turners had experienced no such relief. “It’s been tough on all of us,” Dwahn said, “and we’re still trying to make sense of why it even happened. We don’t have any answers, and the COVID-19 pandemic stuff has really slowed that process down in Mississippi. We’re still reeling because we don’t have any idea what happened or what took place to even trigger such an event.” Dwahn revealed there was some speculation about Denson’s mental health, that perhaps he had some schizophrenic tendencies that might explain his deadly outburst. While it remains something of a mystery, the situation could have gotten much worse had Denson’s brother not wrestled the gun away from him. “I’m not sure that my dad was really the target,” Dwahn said. The impact of Turner’s death extends far beyond his immediate family. His absence from the Covington Police Department, the Newton County School Board and the community as a whole has only highlighted his importance and strengthened his legacy.
