Memphis Federal Task Force Kills Second Person in Four Days; Fourth Death Since September
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A member of a federal crime-fighting task force in Memphis fatally shot a person while serving a drug warrant at a hotel on July 8 or 9, marking the second killing by task force personnel in four days and the fourth death involving the unit since it launched in September 2025.
ANALYSIS
Drug Enforcement Administration agents serving a drug warrant at a Memphis hotel encountered a suspect who refused to open the door. Task force members knocked the door down and the suspect was shot and killed after, according to a US Marshals Service news release, he pointed a handgun at agents. A separate statement from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), which is handling the independent review of the shooting, was more cautious about the circumstances, declining to specify what actions preceded the use of force. TBI is probing both the July 8 and the earlier July 5 incidents.
Four days earlier, Tennessee National Guard troops attached to the same task force shot and killed Tyrin Johnson, 20, in a separate incident. The task force has now been involved in at least four deaths since it began operations in September 2025. The pattern has drawn scrutiny to the unit's operational protocols and use of force standards. Two agencies, the Marshals Service and TBI, have offered divergent characterizations of the most recent shooting, and no independent video of the hotel incident had been publicly released as of publication time.
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