Tyrin Johnson was 20 when two Tennessee National Guard soldiers shot him in downtown Memphis on July 5. The bullet entered his right back and exited his upper right chest, according to an autopsy the family shared. Four months on, no one has been charged.
On Monday the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office released four surveillance and body camera videos from that night. The footage does not capture the moments before the shots. District Attorney Steve Mulroy said the release “will not compromise the work the TBI has done so far or its ability to complete the investigation,” and that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is nearing the end of its inquiry. His office has made no charging decision.
What the videos do show is the aftermath. In one, Mr. Johnson lies on the sidewalk with a gun nearby, and an officer says, “Hey, hey, leave the gun alone” as someone in camouflage reaches toward the ground. The Guardian, which reported the footage in detail, says Guard members trained their handguns on Mr. Johnson as he lay dying.
The official account has not held up. Police said Mr. Johnson turned toward the soldiers with a handgun during a foot chase that began around 4 a.m., after a report of shots fired near Ida B. Wells Drive and Union Avenue, and that the two Guard members, Alyssa Hout and Dallas Jellnick, fired. A gun was recovered at the scene. The autopsy says the bullet went in through his back. Both of those things are in the record, and the people who gave the first account have not reconciled them in public.
The family’s lawyer, Andre Wharton, said the videos “underscore why our Constitution protects every person from unreasonable searches and seizures.” He said they do not capture “the active threats Tyrin was reportedly facing prior to being shot by the task force,” and that “the critical question here is what happened in the immediate moments before Tyrin was shot in the back.” The family has asked the public to be patient while it gathers evidence.
Mr. Johnson was Black, and the soldiers who shot him were in Memphis because of a federal decision about where to send troops. The Guard patrols the city as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, created after President Trump sent troops and federal agents to Democrat-run cities he described as overrun with crime. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund noted in July that task force officers have shot and killed at least three other people and drawn numerous civil rights complaints. It called for the Guard to leave Memphis.
That is the critics’ case against the deployment, and the record so far supports it. Soldiers were put on the streets of a majority-Black city, and the first thing officials offered after a man died was a version of events his autopsy contradicts.
A foot chase after gunfire is dangerous work, and a recovered gun matters. Neither explains why a 20-year-old was hit from behind. Prosecutors owe the family and the city a decision, and it should come with a full public account of the seconds the footage does not show. The TBI says it is nearly done. The next thing to watch is whether Mulroy takes the case to a grand jury.
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