1 killed, deputy injured in shooting
A police search for a 19-year-old accused of shooting several people led officers to an apartment complex early Wednesday morning.
When it was all over, the teen was fatally shot by deputies and a sheriff’s deputy was shot in the leg.
By mid-morning, the injured deputy was in non-critical condition in the company of his family and was in good spirits, said Lt. Anthony Buckner with the Shelby County Sheriff’s office.
The shooting took place at the Eden at Watersedge apartment complex near Mendenhall in the Fox Meadows section of East Memphis.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the fatal officer-involved shooting, following standard practice in Shelby County.
The incident happened between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. when officers with both the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County Sheriff’s Office came to the apartment complex to arrest Keyshon Parham, 19, who had multiple warrants, said TBI spokeswoman Susan Niland.
She said when officers tried to execute a search warrant at an apartment, Parham fled from another exit, leading to a foot chase and a confrontation, the details of which are still unclear.
Niland said she was unable to answer many questions about what happened, including whether Parham was armed, whether he fired at officers and whether a weapon was found at the shooting scene.
It wasn’t clear if the teenager had shot the deputy or if the injury happened another way .
She said two deputies fired shots. The deputy who was shot during the incident did not fire his weapon, she said.
Niland didn’t release the names of the officers involved. Buckner said the sheriff’s office was still deciding when to do it.
Last week, the Memphis Police Department had identified Parham as the suspect in a Oct. 9 shooting that injured three people in the area of I-40 and Hollywood.
In a Facebook post that week, the police department urged people to call in tips about his location.
“Parham has intentionally eluded law enforcement on multiple occasions and is considered to be armed and dangerous,” the Facebook post says.
Court records show Parham had several warrants, including one charging him with multiple counts of attempted first-degree murder. That warrant had been issued Thursday.
Other warrants had been issued against him for alleged offenses including felony theft and aggravated assault. The police department also said he faced a warrant on a charge of intentionally evading arrest in an automobile.
Neighbors wake up to heavy police presence
Damien Hood, 20, said he lives in an apartment near the shooting scene and that his grandmother woke him up Wednesday morning and said there were a lot of police outside.
He said he looked out and saw a large number of officers in green suits running with big guns. “Heavy artillery,” he said. Officers dressed in olive green uniforms and body armor were still visible on the scene early in the morning.
Hood said he went back to sleep and later went out to talk with reporters by the police tape.
He says on the way, he caught a glimpse of a person lying on the ground.
“I just seen his stomach from a distance,” said Hood.
Hood said he was waiting for a chance to get back to his apartment in a blocked-off area.
Also waiting for a chance to go home was 22-year-old Ray Jones, who said he’d noticed the big police presence when he arrived home at the complex about 3:45 a.m. from a shift at FedEx. Both Hood and Jones said they didn’t know who had been shot.
The TBI investigation
The apartment complex covers a big area and includes several man-made ponds.
Investigators put up red crime scene tape — usually reserved for the most critical area of the scene — around a silver vehicle that stood in the middle of a street inside the complex. A TBI vehicle stood next to the silver vehicle.
A black fabric barrier had been put up by the corner of an apartment building not far from the silver vehicle and the TBI vehicle.
The red crime scene tape was also visible at the top of stairwells leading to the upper floor balcony of an apartment building near the silver vehicle.
Several law enforcement officials on the scene were in plainclothes. Some wore plainclothes plus bullet-resistant vests marked with the word “sheriff.”
Plainclothes sheriff ’s deputies carrying out narcotics investigations were involved in the January fatal shooting in North Memphis of Bryan K. Gregory, whom officials described as a drug suspect. The Shelby County District Attorney’s office cleared deputies in that shooting.
Buckner, the SCSO spokesman, wouldn’t confirm which unit the deputies involved in the Wednesday morning shooting were working with.
Shortly after 9 a.m., an armed security guard who said he works for the apartment complex told a reporter from The Commercial Appeal to leave the property.
Looming policy questions
The shooting comes as local officials are working through new policies related to officer-involved shootings.
In recent years, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has come to Memphis to investigate police shootings under a memorandum of agreement with local agencies.
Amid ongoing questions about police shootings, especially of young AfricanAmerican men, civil rights activists argue that bringing in an outside agency leads to more transparency.
But the Shelby County District Attorney’s office often heavily redacts TBI investigative files before releasing them to the public, with black marks covering officers’ names and other key information.
And the Sept. 17 shooting of Martavious Banks in South Memphis by a Memphis police officer didn’t immediately result in a TBI investigation. The reason: the local agencies’ agreement with TBI applies mainly to fatalities, and Banks didn’t die.
Banks’ family immediately raised questions about the incident, as did activists. The TBI was called in the next day, hours after the shooting scene had been opened to foot traffic and evidence may have been disturbed.
Police Director Michael Rallings said one factor leading to the TBI investigation was that internal police investigators learned that the officer who fired shots at Banks hadn’t turned on his body camera, as department policy requires. And he also said two officers involved in an earlier traffic stop appear to have improperly switched off either their body cameras or in-vehicle cameras during a pursuit.
He has also said other officers in the area had their body cameras switched on. But it’s unclear if those cameras caught images of the shooting.
The Shelby County Commission is debating a joint resolution with the Memphis City Council that would require local authorities to call in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation not on all shootings that result in critical injury, not just those that kill a person.
And in a Shelby County Commission meeting this week, commissioners expressed surprise to learn that the Memphis Police Association advises officers not to speak with TBI investigators.
Many officers have avoided giving statements in previous TBI shooting investigations, opting instead to give statements to internal investigators from their police agencies.
A police department or other government agency can force an employee to give a statement in an internal investigation or face termination from the job.
However, these statements, known as Garrity statements, can only be used in criminal investigations if the employee agrees.
Debate over the new policies is ongoing in local governments.
State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, has been working with State Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, and other officials on expanding the role of the TBI in shooting investigations to include nonfatal incidents. He said he’ll introduce legislation next year.
Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercial appeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly. Staff reporter Katie Fretland contributed to this story.