Police officer, suspect dead in Memphis gun battle
A Memphis police officer and an 18-year-old suspect were killed during an early-morning gun battle on Friday that left another suspect and two more officers wounded.
Struggling at times to contain her grief, Interim Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis identified the officer killed as Joseph McKinney, a member of the force since 2020. She said a second officer was in noncritical condition at Regional One, while a third was grazed by a bullet during the shootout and treated at the scene.
“This morning, the men and women of the Memphis Police Department are hurt. As chief of police, I am hurt,” she told reporters during an emotional press conference outside the hospital.
“Today we are here, not just to talk about what happened, but to make an appeal to our community that gun violence has to stop,” she said.
Police were responding to reports of a suspicious vehicle when the deadly confrontation unfolded in Southwest Memphis on Friday around 2:20 a.m. Those inside the car began shooting as soon as officers attempted to approach, forcing them to return fire, Davis said.
The suspects attempted to flee, leading officers on a brief chase that came to an end just a few blocks away.
The suspects, a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old, “were apprehended at that time,” Davis said. “One suspect was taken into custody immediately. One fled the scene and was located nearby.”
They were both transported to Regional One in critical condition, and the elder suspect later died from his wounds.
Davis noted the 18-year-old had been arrested last month in a stolen vehicle. At the time, he possessed an illegal semi-automatic rifle with a Glock switch, which converted the weapon into a fully automatic machine gun.
“He was charged at that time for two stolen vehicles and having a programming device commonly used to steal cars,” Davis said. However, he was released without bond.
Neither suspect has been identified, and Davis said she did not know what prompted the original call reporting the suspicious vehicle.
At the press conference Friday, Memphis Mayor Paul Young also spoke, saying the city needs a community call to action.
“We are heartbroken of the lives lost, our fallen officer, in this senseless act of violence,” he said. “We know that we as a community have to do more to hold violent offenders accountable for their actions, even our young people, we have to make sure that we are pressing for accountability.”
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate the shooting.