Tyrin Johnson was 20 when two Tennessee National Guard members shot him in downtown Memphis on July 5. The Guard’s own report said he “rounded on them and pointed a tan handgun at them.” The autopsy found a single gunshot wound in his back.
The Shelby County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide, and the district attorney’s office has confirmed the finding. Four months on, no one has been charged. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is still investigating, and District Attorney Steve Mulroy will decide what comes next once it finishes.
Johnson was a young Black man killed by soldiers the state had sent into a majority-Black city. The two who fired, Alyssa Hout, 19, and Dallas Jellineck, 20, are both from the Knoxville area. Both are younger than the 21 the Memphis Police Department requires of its own officers.
On Nov. 2, Mulroy’s office released four videos: a stationary street camera, body camera footage from Memphis police and a bystander’s phone. “I made a commitment to release videos when doing so would not interfere with an investigation,” Mulroy said, as WSMV reported.
The footage does not show the moment the Guard members fired. It does show what came before and after. Early on, a person identified as Johnson fires across a parking lot toward a group of men and runs. His family has called those “warning shots.” Two Memphis officers chase him, and within about 90 seconds the Guard members fire. When police reach him, he is on the ground.
The family’s lawyer, Andre Wharton, has pressed on the part the Guard’s account left out. “What is absent is that he was running away, and that is critical,” he said, as WSMV reported.
Here is the fact that cuts against the family: Johnson did fire a weapon that night, and a prosecutor will weigh that. It does not answer the autopsy. A person shot in the back was not facing the people who shot him, and the Guard’s report said he was. The autopsy finding is one the district attorney’s own office has confirmed.
That gap is the story. The Guard’s version made the shooting self-defense, and it fell to a family, a lawyer and a medical examiner to show it did not fit the body. Johnson had moved to Nashville and came back to Memphis for the Fourth of July, despite his family’s warnings. He did not leave alive.
Mulroy kept his promise on the videos. The harder test is the charging decision, and soldiers who fire on a Memphis street should be held to the same standard as the officers beside them. Once the TBI hands over its file, the decision belongs to Mulroy, and Johnson’s family is waiting for it.
Have your say