A Knoxville jury has convicted Kevin Jaimes Martinez of first-degree murder for shooting 38-year-old Ernest Glenn outside a laundromat on Washington Pike, capping a case that began with a dispute over a stolen cell phone and ended with Martinez boarding a bus toward California. A judge ordered Martinez to serve a life sentence following the three-day trial.
Investigators said Martinez, now 22, was angry with Glenn because he believed Glenn had stolen his brother's cell phone, according to WVLT. The shooting happened outside the laundromat in December 2024, and surveillance video captured the moments leading up to it, showing Martinez walk from behind the building to Glenn's car, briefly step away and return behind the structure, then open the car door and shoot Glenn, per the outlet's account.
Police Response and a Cross-State Manhunt
The Knoxville Police Department responded to the shooting on Washington Pike on December 19, 2024, as reported by WATE. District Attorney General Charme Allen said Martinez fled the scene and was ultimately apprehended at the Nashville Greyhound bus station while traveling to California, with Allen crediting Knoxville police for quickly apprehending him with help from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Metro Nashville Police Department.
Accounts of exactly when that arrest happened diverge. The station's report places the capture on December 21, 2024, at a Nashville Greyhound station, while Knox News reported that Martinez, listed there as 21, was taken into custody by Metro Nashville Police Department officers as he was boarding a Greyhound bus on the evening of December 22, according to Knox News.
Conviction and Sentencing
Following the three-day trial, a jury convicted Martinez of first-degree murder, and the judge ordered him to serve a life sentence in prison once the verdict came back, per the same WVLT account. Under Tennessee law, a life sentence for first-degree murder requires Martinez to serve 51 years before becoming eligible to meet with the parole board, a figure the Tennessee General Assembly Fiscal Review Committee calculates from 60 years at an 85 percent threshold.
The case closes out nearly two years after the shooting first drew police to the Washington Pike laundromat, a stretch of road where the violence over a missing phone left Glenn dead and set off the chase that carried Martinez hundreds of miles before he was caught.
