Police shoot man who fired gun outside Jewish school
Memphis police shot an armed man who opened fire outside a Jewish school that he could not enter Monday in what authorities say could have been “a potential mass shooting.”
Police responded before 12:30 p.m. to 911 calls reporting that an armed man had tried to enter Margolin Hebrew Academy-Feinstone Yeshiva of the South in East Memphis. When the unidentified man could not get in, he opened fire outside the Orthodox Jewish school, Memphis Assistant Police Chief Don Crowe said at a news conference. No one was injured at the school, police said.
The man fled in a pickup truck, police said, and about an hour later, officers found a vehicle matching the description of the truck about 3 miles from the school. After the armed suspect left the truck, an officer shot him, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Police said the man, who was taken into custody, was in critical condition at a hospital Monday.
“I am proud of the vigilant and quick response of MPD officers” who prevented what could have been a mass shooting, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said in a statement Monday.
Authorities did not give a motive for the shooting, and charges had not been announced. The TBI is investigating, at the request of Shelby County, Tenn., District Attorney Steve Mulroy and Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat who represents the Memphis area in Congress, said the suspect is Jewish and a former student of the school.
School leaders did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning. On Facebook, the school said it was “shocked and saddened.” It also thanked “the swift response by the Memphis Police Department.”
A Memphis police spokesperson directed inquiries to the TBI. A bureau spokesperson did not give additional details on the investigation and pointed to the bureau's news release Monday.
There has been a record number of reports of anti-Jewish hate incidents in the United States in recent years. The Anti-Defamation League reported about 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the United States last year, the most since it began such tracking. It was a spike of 36 percent from 2021.