The city of Memphis went into lockdown Wednesday night as police tracked down a gunman who was driving around shooting people, seemingly at random — while live-streaming some of the crimes on Facebook.
“ALARM!! MILITARY AND DANGER” the police said in their first tweet about the emergency.
“Shelter in place,” Memphis Police Major Karen Rudolph urged city residents.
As night fell, with the ruthless shooters still large, the University of Memphis locked its gates and suspended public transport until arrest could be made. The Memphis Redbirds minor league halted their game and cleared the players’ pitches.
Police posted a photo of the 19-year-old suspect and identified him as Ezekiel Kelly. They said he was initially driving a blue or silver sedan but may now be driving a gray SUV.
Police did not say how many shootings there were or where they took place, but the gunman is believed to have claimed responsibility for five shootings in one of the videos.
WREG reported that there had been two confirmed shootings in South Memphis in the hours before the alert was issued. A man was fatally shot at a gas station shortly after 4:30 p.m., and shortly thereafter, a woman was seriously injured near a ramp up I-240.
In a video clip going viral online showing the suspect, he jumps out of a car and says, “This is real,” then walks into a store and shoots a man without warning. .
The photo released by the police matched the profile picture on the Facebook page with a Zeke Huncho handle filled with photos of him and other young men with bags of money and guns.
A post on that page, from August 18 and addressed to his mother, reads: “I swear I won’t join a fight I promise.”
In his Facebook stories in the hours before the shooting, he retweeted a string of previous posts, including one from 2019 that read: “My son turned into a boy. bitch, my daughter should carry my casket.”
Another retweet, from January 2020, reads: “I can pray and sin and then pray again!!”
Court records show Kelly was indicted in 2020 on charges of attempted murder, possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, but the handling of that case is unclear.
