The Tennessee National Guard shot 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson in the back, then claimed they fired while he was facing them. The autopsy says otherwise. And the state is circling the wagons.
Johnson was killed in the early morning hours after the Fourth of July in Memphis by Guard members assigned to the Memphis Safe Task Force — a federal anti-crime operation created by President Trump that deployed troops to Democratic-run cities. That task force was involved in four fatal shootings between May and July alone.
Authorities told the public Johnson turned toward Guard members with a gun while running from them and was shot in the chest. A Tennessee National Guard report obtained by the Associated Press claims the suspect "rounded on them and pointed a tan handgun at them," prompting both troops to fire their M17 handguns.
The autopsy tells a different story. A single bullet entered the right side of Johnson's back and exited through his upper right chest, according to the report prepared by the West Tennessee Regional Forensic Center. The bullet traveled on a slightly upward trajectory — consistent with Johnson running away from the shooter, said Dr. Steven White, a certified forensic pathologist who reviewed the report for the AP. No soot, gunpowder stippling, or muzzle imprint was found around the wound, indicating Johnson was shot from more than three feet away.
Yet even the autopsy report's own "investigative narrative" — based on a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent's account — still insists Johnson was "turning toward law enforcement with a gun" and that officers "struck him once in the chest." The physical evidence documents a wound to the back. The state's paperwork says chest. The manner of death is listed as homicide.
Andre Wharton, an attorney for Johnson's family, called it plainly: "I just see some kind of blatant inconsistency there, in terms of what law enforcement reports. The versions don't seem to match."
They don't match because one version is what happened and the other is what the state needs you to believe happened. The TBI and the Shelby County district attorney's office both claimed they hadn't even seen the National Guard's report. Kim Wheeler-Elder, a TBI spokesperson, actually asked the AP where it obtained the publicly available document — as if a press agency doing basic records work was somehow suspicious.
The Guard members who pulled the trigger remain unnamed.
Johnson's grandfather, Evaniel Johnson — himself a former correctional officer — put it straight: "Be transparent — you shot him in the back. I just want to make sure somebody be responsible for what happened. Some accountability. They ain't never going to bring my grandson back."
A 20-year-old is dead. The government's story was a lie. The forensics prove it. And the same agencies that fabricated the narrative are the ones tasked with investigating themselves.
