John Henry Peterson, a 24-year-old from Chico, Texas, walked into the Wise County Sheriff's Office in Decatur on July 19, 2026, and confessed to fatally shooting 27-year-old Kiuna Ball inside her Memphis home more than three years earlier, on March 23, 2023. Peterson told investigators he shot Ball four times during what he described as a robbery for marijuana.
Peterson said he was down on his luck when the shooting happened, according to Action News 5. Ball was found on her kitchen floor with multiple gunshot wounds to the torso and head at Shadowbrook Townhomes on Sarabee Lane, the outlet reported, and Peterson admitted to stealing more than 4.5 pounds of marijuana before fleeing the scene.
How a Walk-In Confession Reopened the Case
Peterson's decision to walk into the sheriff's office lobby led a Wise County investigator and a Texas Ranger to sit down with him, and their interview gave Memphis police the statements needed to seek an arrest warrant, according to the Wise County Messenger. The Wise County Sheriff's Office is headquartered in Decatur, roughly 500 miles southwest of Memphis, the paper reported.
Peterson was charged with first-degree murder in perpetration of robbery and has since been extradited to Shelby County to face the charge, per Action News 5. Interstate transfers like his fall under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, which requires either a governor's warrant or a suspect's explicit waiver before a person can be moved between state law enforcement agencies, according to the Tennessee Bar Association.
The Felony Murder Charge Peterson Faces
Under Tennessee Code Annotated § 39-13-202(a)(2), a killing committed during the perpetration of a robbery counts as first-degree felony murder, meaning prosecutors don't have to prove Peterson intended to kill Ball, according to Justia Law.
A first-degree murder conviction in Tennessee carries a mandatory sentence of either the death penalty, life without parole, or life with the possibility of parole only after serving a minimum of 51 years, per FindLaw.
Shadowbrook Townhomes' Deadly Stretch in 2023
Ball's killing wasn't the only bloodshed at Shadowbrook Townhomes that spring. Two days later, on March 25, 2023, a home intruder shot three people inside another townhome there, killing a child, according to WREG News Channel 3.
The killing happened amid Memphis's deadliest year on record, with 351 homicides logged citywide in 2023, according to a Wikipedia compilation of local crime data. Homicides have since fallen sharply: the Memphis Police Department reported a 26% drop in 2025, pushing the annual homicide count below 200 for the first time since 2019 — a 47% decrease from 2023 levels — and the department has long offered up to $2,000 through Crime Stoppers of Memphis and Shelby County for anonymous tips in unsolved homicide cases like Ball's.
What ultimately led Peterson to walk into a Texas sheriff's office more than three years after the shooting remains unclear. His movements between Tennessee and Texas in the years since the killing, and whether he had any prior connection to Ball, are also unresolved.
