A car burst into flames after a high-speed Tennessee Highway Patrol pursuit in Southwest Memphis late on September 30, leaving one person dead, and days later state troopers still have not explained what happened. The crash shut down South Third Street near Shelby Drive overnight before the roadway reopened.
According to FOX13 Memphis, the station's crews responded to the aftermath of a fiery crash in the area and later reviewed Broadcastify scanner traffic between multiple law enforcement agencies from that night. The scanner audio captured Tennessee Highway Patrol pursuing a car southbound on Third Street, with the chase continuing for about two minutes before it ended at Third Street near Shelby. A Memphis dispatcher relayed that the car was traveling about 120 mph southbound on Third Street, the outlet reported. The vehicle caught fire at the intersection, and a burned body was later removed from the car, per the same scanner traffic reviewed by FOX13.
Dispatcher Audio Raises Questions About Who Was Involved
The scanner recordings also captured a Memphis dispatcher speaking with an MPD supervisor, who asked whether Memphis police had been involved in the pursuit. The dispatcher responded that Memphis police was not involved at all, the station's report notes. Separately, Memphis police advised that the crash was a Tennessee Highway Patrol matter, according to the same FOX13 account, while a FOX13 photographer was on scene at South Third Street documenting the aftermath.
Other outlets covering the overnight crash offered a similar but not identical picture. Action News 5 reported that Memphis Police and the Tennessee Highway Patrol both responded to the crash at South Third Street and Shelby Drive just before midnight, and that the street was shut down before reopening. But La Prensa Latina reported that although the crash occurred on city streets, Memphis police were not leading the investigation, and that the identity of the deceased had not been publicly released, nor had details regarding the possible causes of the crash been disclosed, according to La Prensa Latina.
Troopers Have Not Responded to Repeated Requests
FOX13 contacted the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Thursday morning for information about the crash and received no response. The station followed up again on Monday, and as of Monday afternoon, troopers still had not responded, the outlet reported.
The silence fits a pattern advocates and journalists have flagged around the Memphis Safe Task Force's pursuit practices. During the task force's first five weeks of operation, 75 vehicle pursuits were identified, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol conducted 66 of them, or 88 percent, while Memphis police handled eight and the Shelby County Sheriff's Office conducted one, according to Tennessee Lookout. Of those 75 chases, 32, or 43 percent, resulted in crashes, including 29 crashes tied to THP pursuits, the outlet found. Reviewed affidavits described troopers engaging in pursuits that often exceeded 100 mph and ran through red lights and residential neighborhoods, per the same reporting.
A Second Death Tied to Task Force Pursuits
This is not the first fatal outcome tied to the task force's pursuits this year. Reggie Pederson was killed on August 2 in a car crash stemming from a high-speed police chase that he had no involvement in, according to the Daily Memphian. At least two people have died in pursuits since the task force arrived, the paper reported, and advocates are calling for clearer policies and required reporting around how and when officers initiate chases.
Crashes tied to high-speed pursuits in the Memphis area are not new. A June 29 crash on South Third Street near Holmes Road killed two people after a car struck a tree, with the DeSoto County Sheriff's Department saying the same car had fled from deputies in Mississippi just minutes before, according to FOX13 Memphis. In a separate incident in Frayser, a driver fleeing a THP pursuit was killed when the vehicle struck a tree and caught fire on St. Elmo Avenue, per WREG. Tennessee Lookout also documented a 110 mph chase down Winchester Road that ended when the vehicle struck an uninvolved car and a concrete pole, and a 120 mph chase down James Road that ended when the vehicle left the roadway and went into a ditch.
By comparison, Tennessee Lookout noted that New York City has limited its officers to pursuing motorists suspected of committing the “most serious and violent crimes,” a policy standard raised amid ongoing debate over how aggressively Memphis-area pursuits should be conducted. Tennessee legislation cited in state records states that an enforcement officer's decision to initiate or continue a pursuit shall not be deemed the proximate cause of a crash caused by a fleeing suspect's willful, wanton or negligent driving, though the full scope and applicability of that provision remains unclear. For now, the cause of the September 30 crash, the identity of the person killed, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol's role in the chase that preceded it remain unanswered questions that troopers have yet to address publicly.
