A Memphis police officer and a teenager were killed during a shootout early Friday after police responded to call about a suspicious vehicle.
Officers responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle at Horn Lake Road and Charter Avenue at 2 a.m. Friday, police said. When they approached the car, police said they were fired upon by the occupants inside and officers returned fire.
In the shower of bullets, two teenage suspects and three officers were hit, resulting in deaths of one suspect and one officer, identified as Officer Joseph McKinney.
In the chaos, the suspect vehicle fled and officers pursued. The car stopped in the 400 block of Hewlett Road and one suspect was taken into custody. The other suspect fled the scene and was located nearby and also taken into custody, police said.
Two officers were transported to Regional One Health Hospital in Memphis, and “tragically one of our officers lost his life,” Police Chief Cerelyn ‘C.J.’ Davis said in a morning news conference.
McKinney had joined the department in 2020, Davis said.
A second officer has been upgraded to noncritical condition and “is doing well,” she said.
A third officer was treated on the scene and is in stable condition, Davis said. Police initially said that two were struck and a third was grazed by gunfire.
Both suspects were also transported in critical condition to Regional One, where one suspect, described as an 18-year-old who had been driving the suspect vehicle, died of his wounds, Davis said. His name was not disclosed.
The other suspect, described as 17, remains in the hospital.
Davis said the 18-year-old suspect who died had been previously arrested by Memphis police in March this year, found in a stolen vehicle with “an illegal modified semi-automatic weapon with a Glock switch attached” which converted the weapon into a fully-automatic machine gun.
At that time the teen was also charged in connection with two stolen vehicles and having a programming devise…
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