A 52-year-old Kodak man is behind bars on $500,000 bond after deputies say he shot a man early on September 3, leaving the victim with a gunshot wound and touching off a four-day manhunt that ended with a traffic stop. Lawrence M. Ryan Jr. now faces two counts of attempted first-degree murder in connection with the shooting on Turner Way.
Sevier County deputies responded to the 4400 block of Turner Way in Kodak just after 1 a.m. that morning, according to WATE 6 On Your Side. They found a male victim suffering from a gunshot wound; he was transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville for treatment. A woman who was also present at the scene was not injured, the station reported.
Ryan was not immediately taken into custody. He was arrested four days later, on September 7, following a traffic stop somewhere in Tennessee, per the same station's report. Jail intake records show he was booked into the Sevier County Jail that day at 4:23 p.m. under the two attempted first-degree murder counts, according to the county's own detention database accessible through the ISOMS Portal.
What the Charges Could Mean for Ryan
Attempted first-degree murder is a Class A felony under Tennessee Code Annotated § 39-11-117, the state's most serious classification short of a capital offense, according to FindLaw. A standard first-time, or Range I, offender convicted of a Class A felony in Tennessee faces a prison term of 15 to 25 years, according to legal analysis from Patton | Pittman Law.
Should Ryan be convicted, Tennessee's Truth in Sentencing law, which took effect July 1, 2022, would require him to serve the entire court-imposed sentence with no early parole eligibility or credit reductions, per an explainer from Lannom and Williams. Ryan is scheduled to appear in court on October 9.
Kodak's Sheriff's Office Jurisdiction
Kodak is an unincorporated community in northern Sevier County along Interstate 40 and State Route 66, meaning it falls under the jurisdiction of the Sevier County Sheriff's Office rather than a city police department, according to Wikipedia. The agency is led by Sheriff Michael R. Hodges Jr., who was sworn in for his second term this month after more than two decades with the department, per a post on the sheriff's Facebook page.
The community's name has an unusual origin: local postmaster Harvey N. Underwood secured permission from camera inventor George Eastman in 1892 to name the village post office after the Eastman Kodak company because the word was easy to spell and remember, according to Wikipedia and Kiddle. Today the 37764 ZIP code covering Kodak is home to roughly 12,562 residents with a median household income of $70,989, per Census Bureau estimates compiled by Simplemaps.
A county spokesperson said more information would be released as it becomes available, WATE reported. The investigation remains ongoing, and it is not yet clear what relationship, if any, existed between Ryan and the two people present at the shooting scene, nor an updated condition for the wounded victim.
Not the County's First Recent Shooting
Gun violence has surfaced elsewhere in Sevier County in recent months. In November 2025, emergency personnel responded to a separate multi-person shooting stemming from a neighbor dispute in nearby Sevierville that left two people injured, according to WVLT. That case remains a separate matter from the Turner Way shooting in Kodak.
