Tense calm in Memphis after killing
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Police enforced a tense calm on Thursday in a Memphis neighborhood where 25 officers were injured by a rock-throwing crowd following a black man’s shooting death by U.S. marshals on a fugitive task force.
Elected officials condemned the crowd as violent, and the police chief pleaded for patience while state authorities investigated the killing. Unanswered questions about the circumstances left many people angry as they recalled with bitterness a litany of police-involved shootings around the country.
Crowds appeared shortly after the task force shot 20-year-old Brandon Webber around 7 Wednesday night, and numbers grew swiftly as people livestreamed the scene on social media. Memphis police initially responded in street uniforms, then returned in riot gear as people threw rocks and bricks. Mayor Jim Strickland said 25 officers were injured, six of them seriously enough to need hospital treatment.
Officers cordoned off several blocks around the scene in the Frayser neighborhood north of downtown and arrested three people. By 11 p.m., officers had used tear gas and most of the crowd dispersed, police director Michael Rallings said.
Early Thursday, officers on horseback patrolled the area, and lines of police cars with flashing blue lights were parked along the street. An ambulance waited at the outer edge, and a helicopter flew overhead.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Keli McAlister said the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force went to a Frayser home to look for a suspect with felony warrants. Marshals saw the man get into a vehicle and then proceed to ram task force vehicles several times before exiting with a weapon, McAlister said. Marshals then opened fire, killing the man who died at the scene. McAlister did not say how many marshals fired or how many times the man was shot.
The TBI identified the dead man on Thursday as Webber. Authorities have not provided details about the charges that prompted the task force’s interest in him. A criminal history for him released by the TBI lists two arrests, April 2017 and April 2018, on charges including weapons possession, drug dealing, and driving without a proper license. Court records show the 2018 charges were not prosecuted and the 2017 charges were dismissed.
His father, Sonny Webber, told The Associated Press that his son had been planning to return to the University of Memphis in August.
“He had a son that’s two,” Sonny Webber said in a phone interview. “He just had a daughter, his first daughter, two weeks ago. He’s got another daughter expected any day now. He would have had three children. Now he’ll have a child that he won’t get to meet.”
Memphis police officers were called in to help with crowd control as word of the shooting spread on social media. As more protesters showed up, more Memphis officers and Shelby County sheriff ’s deputies arrived at the scene. The situation then escalated, and officers donned riot gear as people threw rocks. Police cars and a nearby fire station were damaged, Rallings said.