A 78-year-old man is facing a first-degree murder charge after police say an argument over a $6 debt ended with a North Memphis man shot dead on the sidewalk outside his home. Investigators say Louis Bynum demanded the money from Micheal Cook, threatened him when he refused to pay, then pulled out a revolver and opened fire.
Memphis Police officers responded to a shooting call near the 800 block of Crockett Place on October 30, according to WREG. When they arrived, they found Cook with gunshot wounds on the sidewalk; he was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers located Bynum standing in the street nearby, and a witness told officers he was the one who pulled the trigger.
Police say the confrontation started small. Bynum allegedly demanded $6 from Cook, and when Cook refused to hand it over, Bynum threatened him before drawing the revolver and firing, according to the station's report. A witness told police that Bynum fired several additional shots at Cook even after he had already fallen to the ground.
Neighbors Intervened After the Shooting
According to witness accounts, neighborhood residents rushed in and knocked Bynum down after the shooting, then took both his weapon and a weapon Cook had been carrying. One witness said he heard multiple gunshots after he had already gone back inside his residence, and another told police he saw Bynum standing over Cook once the shooting stopped.
Investigators say a witness statement also captured something chilling from Bynum before the confrontation turned deadly: that he said he was going to jail and would kill someone who owed him $6. Bynum was taken into custody after a witness identified him to officers at the scene.
Charges and Conflicting Identification
Bynum was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, employment of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, according to Action News 5, which identified the suspect as Lewis Bynum, 78. WREG's reporting spells the suspect's name Louis Bynum. No mugshot had been made available at the time of either report.
Bynum was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning, and no bond had been set as of the latest reporting.
Part of a Broader Drop in Memphis Violence
The shooting comes as Memphis has been touting a sharp decline in violent crime. The Memphis Police Department reported fewer than 200 murders in 2025, the first time the city has fallen below that threshold since 2019, alongside 643 shooting incidents, a 38% drop from the year before. The department says its focus for 2026 is sustaining those gains.
Other data sources tell a similar but not identical story. The Council on Criminal Justice found that reported levels of nine of 10 offenses in Memphis were lower in 2025 than in 2024, with homicides down 24%, even as the group noted the city's homicide rate in the first half of 2025 remained 58% higher than in the first half of 2019. Separately, Fox13 Memphis cited police data showing 235 homicides in 2025, compared with 301 in 2024 and 399 in 2023, while a WREG database search put the 2025 total at 184 murders, a 26% decrease from 249 the year before. The figures vary by source and likely reflect different counting methods, but all point in the same downward direction even as individual, senseless killings like Cook's continue.
