Corey Godbolt's family talks about the morning he allegedly killed Ferral and Sheila Burage Therese Apel/ The Clarion-Ledger


The only physical pain Corey Godbolt felt as he allegedly went on his brutal rampage through Lincoln County overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning was inflicted by Ferral Burage as he fought to the death to save his family. 

It was a little before 6 a.m., and Ferral and Sheila Burage and Sheila's sister Shonda May, along with Shonda's daughter, had just gotten home from the crime scene in Bogue Chitto where Godbolt is accused of shooting three of their family members - Brenda May, Tocarra May, and Barbara Mitchell — and Lincoln County Deputy William Durr.

Shonda May had been at the Lee Road home in Bogue Chitto for a family gathering before the first shooting and had left to go to the store when she got a call that Godbolt had showed up at the house, and then had shot her family members.

She was still reeling from the news, and the feeling she had barely missed being a victim by the time she got back home around 6 a.m.

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She was on the phone in the kitchen when she heard a knock at the door. 

"Who is it?" Ferral said.

"Me," came the answer. Shonda assumed it was her nephew. 

"Who's me?" Ferral asked. 

"Me," repeated the visitor. 

"Ferral went to peek out the window where the air conditioner is, and all of a sudden I hear, 'Pop pop pop pop pop,'" Shonda said. The family scattered.

What they didn't know was that Godbolt had allegedly told Xavier Lilly, 16, who he is accused of kidnapping at gunpoint from the home on Coopertown Road where he is accused of killing Jordan Blackwell, 18, and Austin Edwards, 11, that he was going to the home to kill the people that lived there. All of them were related to him, too.

As Godbolt walked into the home, Ferral was able to fire four shots, family members said. One of them hit Godbolt in the arm. 

"I looked at my niece and told her, 'Run, hide, find somewhere to hide because if we go out this back door he’s gonna shoot us in the back.' I don’t know which way she went to find her hiding spot. As I was coming back across the kitchen..." May said, growing emotional. "... my sister was saying, 'Shoot, Ferral, shoot!'”

Myrtis May, mother to Sheila Burage and Shonda May, said she believed Godbolt had on a bullet proof vest, which she believed was the reason Ferral didn't kill him on the spot.

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Shonda said she saw Ferral fall as the heavily-armed Godbolt shot him multiple times.

"I ran in my niece's room and went in the closet, and I had my phone on silent, and I could hear, '911, what’s your emergency?'" Shonda said. "I worried, if I can hear them, then he can hear them."

Godbolt then reportedly went to the bedroom where Sheila Burage had locked herself in the bathroom. As he had done to get into the home on Coopertown Road, Godbolt is accused of blasting several shots at the locked door until he could kick it open. 

At that point, he shot Sheila so many times that on Tuesday, her daughter did not want anyone to go into the bathroom to see the damage.

The house phone started ringing at one point, and when the answering machine picked up, Myrtis May's voice filled the house. She was calling to warn Sheila that Godbolt could be on his way there. Godbolt tore the phone line out of the wall, then dismantling the alarm system as well.

Shonda was in the closet when an eerie horror movie silence finally settled over the house. She could hear Godbolt walking around the house, and she was texting family members, begging for help.

"'He done killed Ferral and Sheila and I’m scared,'" she said she texted. "'I’m hiding in the closet.'"

And she thought she would be killed next.

"I could hear him coming down the hallway and I was saying, 'Oh my God, he’s going to find me, he's going to find me. Jesus please don’t let him find me,'" Shonda said. 

"He was just standing there. I knew he was there. I could feel him."

Shonda could hear him on the phone.

"He told them it was over, it was done, he loved them, he told them, 'See, I told you I’d do anything in the world for you. Now please take care of my son because he’s not like me. Now I’m on my way to the hospital, do you think they’ll let you see me when I get to the hospital?' Then I guess they asked him why, and he said that he had been hit," Shonda recounted.

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Shonda broke into tears as she told the story of Farrel Burage standing between a rampaging intruder bent on destruction and the family he had married into.

"That’s when I knew that my brother-in-law had hit him. If he didn’t have that bulletproof vest he never would have made it in my sister’s house," she said. "My brother-in-law died protecting us. He is my hero. He is my hero. And he doesn’t even know it because he’s not here for me to tell him that he’s my hero."

Godbolt finally left the house, running down the road on foot, where he was met by officers and agents from at least nine agencies. As he lay on the ground while they cuffed him, he told police a lot of things. Among the things he could be overheard talking about was someone hiding in a closet in the house he had just left. 

He had known Shonda was there.

Around 11 that night, Myrtis May had been walking down the driveway and had a premonition that left her unsettled.

"I went to my mailbox and on my way up the sidewalk and I felt two bullets hit me and I saw myself fall but I was still walking," she said. "So I put my pajamas on and got in bed, and something told me no. I said, 'Something happened in (Bogue Chitto) so I had to go."

Myrtis was told by family members at another time that Godbolt had wanted her dead as well. They said there was a list of people he wanted dead, and that she was on it. Calling Godbolt a coward, she chose to focus on her loved ones instead.

"They were some of the most generous people you’d ever want to meet. They were Christians, true Christians, not pretend Christians. They would help anybody and do anything. They were kind, they were generous, they helped anybody that they could, they were sweet and friendly, and she had a heart of gold. She was so kind. She was precious. She was very precious to me," the grieving mother said.

Myrtis May laughed as she said her daughter, who loved to do floral arrangements, would only allow her to help by handing her supplies.

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"The way she made flowers and wreaths and stuff for other people and charge them little or nothing, she practically gave it away. She did funerals, I’ll just remember all the hard work she put into stuff," Myrtis said. "If I could I’d make her the most beautiful casket spread that I could."

Shakwontia Jenkins of Hazlehurst worked on the floral arrangements with Sheila. 

"We were talking on the phone on Wednesday because she’d seen one of my arrangements and she told me how beautiful that it was," she said. "She told me, 'If something happens to me -- not saying that it is, baby -- I want you to do my stuff because that is beautiful.'"

Godbolt had told The Clarion-Ledger at the scene of his arrest that he had planned to commit suicide by cop. Having heard his phone call, Shonda May said she didn't  believe him at all when he said that. 

"This coward. Coward, that’s what he is is a coward. If you really wanted to die, all you had to do is out the gun to your head and pull the trigger," she said. "This was planned. He is not crazy, he did not snap. He planned this. He had a list of names he wanted to take out."

"Corey, you took a lot of my loved ones away," she continued. "You think you’re going to make a name for yourself, but you’re not. Our loved ones were already shining, and you put the spotlight on them and made them shine brighter."


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