Man gets weapon charge in fatal shooting of Memphis officer
People wait outside the Regional Medical Center, Sunday, in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said Memphis Police Officer Terence Olridge was killed after being shot multiple times while off duty Sunday.
Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong speaks with the media outside the Regional Medical Center about the death of Memphis Police Officer Terence Olridge, Sunday, in Memphis, Tenn. Olridge when he was shot multiple times Sunday.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A 36-year-old man has been charged with felony possession of a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of an off-duty Memphis officer, police said Monday.
Memphis police spokesman Louis Brownlee said Lorenzo Clark is a neighbor of 31-year-old Terence Olridge, who died Sunday after being shot multiple times at a home in the Memphis suburb of Cordova.
Brownlee declined to give further details or say whether more charges would be filed in the case.
Clark was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. Court records did not show whether he had a lawyer who could be contacted for comment.
Olridge is one of four Memphis officers have been shot to death in just over four years and the second fatally shot in the past 2.5 months.
“It just doesn’t get any easier,” Armstrong told reporters Sunday. “I didn’t think that we’d be here again so soon.”
He noted that the investigation is in its early phases, adding that “details are sketchy.”
Police on Sunday blocked the street in front of the house where the shooting happened. A plainclothes detective spoke with a neighbor. Uniformed officers also were on the scene.
Olridge, who joined the department in September 2014, had a fiancee who is four months pregnant, Armstrong said.
Relatives of the officer could be seen crying outside the hospital where he was taken.
In August, Memphis police officer Sean Bolton was fatally shot in the line of duty. Police have charged 29-year-old Tremaine Wilbourn, who was on probation for an armed bank robbery, with first-degree murder in Bolton’s death.
Officer Tim Warren was killed while responding to a shooting at a downtown Memphis hotel in July 2011. In December 2012, Officer Martoiya Lang was killed while serving a warrant.