Man killed by Memphis police in library had shot officer: Authorities

A Memphis police officer shot and killed a man in a public library Thursday afternoon after the man shot another officer, critically wounding him, authorities said.

The Memphis Police Department, which has been under intense scrutiny after the beating that led to the death of Tyre Nichols last month, said that the man who was shot was pronounced dead at the scene. The officer was taken to a hospital in “extremely critical” condition, the department said.

Keli McAlister, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which was called in to investigate the shooting, said Memphis police responded to a report of a man trespassing at a business near the Poplar-White Station Library around noon. The same man got into a confrontation with someone else about 30 minutes later inside the library, McAlister said, and when police tried to talk to him, he pulled out a gun and shot an officer.

A second police officer then fatally shot the man, she said. McAlister said that both officers, as well as the man whom the police killed — identified by the bureau as Torence Jackson Jr, 28, of Indianapolis — were Black men.

Brad Winchester, 59, a regular at the Poplar-White Station Library, said that it was quiet at the branch when he arrived a little after noon, with only about five patrons and the library’s staff inside.

When he walked in, Winchester said he noticed two police officers near the library’s computer bank questioning a man he had never seen before.

“I’d made it around to the area where I read my books,” Winchester said. “I’d gotten two pages into the book and the shooting started.”

He said he heard several shots and dragged a female patron behind a bookcase to hide her from the gunfire. When he looked up, he saw a police officer wounded on the ground, with another officer trying to help him.

The local district attorney, Steven J. Mulroy, had asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to look into the shooting. Mulroy’s office is leading the prosecution of the five Memphis police officers who have been charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ death after video footage showed officers punching and kicking Nichols and striking him with a baton.