MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis woman says she was on the phone with her husband when his drive from one job to another went horribly wrong.
Clovis Hodge was shot and killed in what police call a case of road rage — and his wife Jana Hodge heard it all.
She holds on to her faith that her husband’s killer will soon be captured, but police need your help to find him.
Hodge said three weeks ago, her 49-year-old husband was in Frayser doing some electrical work on a house. She says it was after 10 in the morning.
Clovis had wrapped up one job and was on his way to the next when he picked up the phone and called her just to say hello and hear her voice.
“Clovis was always smiling, always happy, he was just a good guy,” she said.
Hodge said while she was on the phone with her husband when someone cut him off in traffic on Stage Road near Benjestown. She said her husband exchanged words with the driver.
“He said, ‘Dude, get off your phone, you about ran me over.’”
Hodge said that’s when things took a deadly turn. She says the driver pulled up next to her husband at a traffic light.
“I said, ‘Sweetie is he gone?’ He was like, ‘Yes, Sparky he is gone.’ Then I heard a noise,” she recalled.
She thought the man had run her husband’s vans off the road. Turns out, that noise was the sound of gunfire. Hodge says she heard the moment her husband crashed his work van up against a tree.
She rushed to the scene with her son.
“I climbed inside the van,” she said. “He was never coherent, he was breathing the whole time. I loved him and I told him God was with him and I kissed him.”
His van had three bullet holes in it, one of those bullets hit him in the head. He didn’t survive.
“There weren’t that many words exchanged, that’s why the shooting just blew my mind,” Hodge said. “You have broken a family, you have hurt so many people over an act of rage.”
Memphis Police released these pictures of the vehicle seen following Hodge’s white van right before the shooting, and also seen leaving the scene at a high rate of speed right after the shooting.
If you recognize this vehicle or know who killed Clovis Hodge, you are urged to call Crime Stoppers at 528-CASH. Your tip could help put a dangerous criminal behind bars and $2,000 cash in your pocket.