A 31-year-old Robinsonville woman was killed at an apartment complex on Old Highway 61 North on Saturday afternoon, and her husband died hours later outside the Tunica County Sheriff's Office after telling deputies he was coming in to turn himself in. The Tunica County Sheriff's Office is investigating the case as a homicide-suicide involving Alanitra Adam-Banks, 31, and her husband, James Banks, 54, both of Robinsonville.
According to Action News 5, deputies responded to a shooting call just before 1 p.m. on November 14 at the Lexington Apartments in Robinsonville. Deputies arriving at the complex found a female victim with multiple gunshot wounds, and she was later identified as Adam-Banks, who died at the scene from her injuries, deputies said. A caller identified James Banks, her husband, as the suspected shooter, as reported by WREG.
A Final Call Before the Second Shooting
Hours after the Robinsonville shooting, Banks told authorities he was en route to the Tunica County Sheriff's Office to turn himself in, according to the Tunica County Sheriff's Office. Deputies instead found him suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the parking lot by his vehicle. Lifesaving measures were performed, but Banks died from his injuries, per the sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office is continuing to investigate the deaths as a homicide-suicide, deputies said. Authorities have asked anyone with information about the case to contact the Tunica County Sheriff's Office at 662-363-1411.
A Pattern Reflected in National Data
The case fits a pattern documented nationally. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 65% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner, and that 96% of victims in those crimes are female, according to a Mississippi fact sheet from the organization. The same fact sheet notes that Mississippi does not release intimate-partner homicide data to the public, limiting what is known about how often these cases occur statewide.
The group's research also found that an abuser's access to firearms increases the risk of intimate-partner femicide at least five-fold, and that when a firearm is used in the most severe incident of abuse, that risk climbs 41-fold, the fact sheet states.
Another Tunica County Case Still Under Investigation
This is not the only recent case in Tunica County that investigators have described in similar terms. In a separate incident, deputies responding to a medical-assistance call at 1325 Jacks Avenue found a husband and wife each with a single gunshot wound, according to DeSoto County News. Investigators in that case said the evidence pointed toward a possible murder-suicide and described the investigation as active and ongoing.
Robinsonville has also seen a string of unrelated fatal shootings in recent years. A Hoodline report on a killing at a nearby apartment complex noted that Tunica County's age-adjusted homicide rate stood at 37.6 per 100,000 residents based on National Institutes of Health data from 2020 through 2024, compared with 21.1 statewide and 7.6 nationally. That same report cited a September 2025 analysis by the Center for American Progress putting the county's rural gun homicide rate at 43.68 per 100,000 residents.
