With 3 Months Left in 2020, Memphis Sets Homicide Record

The city of Memphis, Tennessee, has already broken its record for killings in a calendar year with 230, even though there are still about three months left in 2020, police said Tuesday.

The deaths of a woman who was shot at a fast-food restaurant drive-thru over the weekend and a 12-year-old boy who was shot in a Memphis neighborhood on Monday moved Tennessee’s second-largest city above the previous record of 228 homicides in a year, set in 2016… {snip}

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Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings and Deputy Chief Samuel Hines have said the combination of economic and social stressors have contributed to the high number of homicides, The Commercial Appeal reported.

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“The bodies are stacking up,” Rallings told the newspaper. “We have three more months to go in the year, we could break 300 homicides … all of Memphis should be in an uproar over this.”

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