MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Tyrin Johnson, the 20-year-old man fatally shot by Tennessee National Guard members in downtown Memphis on July 5, 2026, was shot in the back, according to autopsy findings reported August 27, 2026 by the Associated Press, Action News 5, FOX13, and the Daily Memphian.

The medical examiner has also ruled Johnson's manner of death a homicide, Action News 5 reported.

A homicide ruling by a medical examiner means a death was caused by the actions of another person. It is a medical classification of how someone died. It is not a criminal charge, not a finding that a crime occurred, and not a determination that anyone acted unlawfully. Those questions belong to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is still working, and to the Shelby County District Attorney, who has not decided anything.

The AP, citing the autopsy report, described Johnson as armed at the time of the shooting. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which investigates the task force's uses of force, identified him on July 5 and said Guard members on patrol shot him during a pursuit.

Andre Wharton, an attorney for Johnson's family, told Action News 5 the account does not hold together. "So it doesn't add up," Wharton said. "And that just gives the family further harm when they have to hear about a story that's kind of inconsistent with what the allegations were initially. So, it's concerning."

He put the legal standard plainly: "It's very fundamental. When someone's fleeing, you can't shoot them in the back just because they're fleeing from law enforcement or fleeing from someone else. That's a no-no. You have to be consistent with the Constitution. You can't shoot somebody dead because you're trying to stop them."

The TBI told the station the shooting "is still under investigation." A spokesperson for District Attorney Steve Mulroy said he "will decide how to proceed once the TBI findings are finalized." The Tennessee National Guard has not commented publicly on the autopsy.

The autopsy is the first medical examiner's finding to become public in any of the deaths connected to the Memphis Safe Task Force. As The 901 Report reported on August 4, the TBI is investigating eight use-of-force incidents involving task force officers, and four people are dead. No finding from any of those investigations has been released. No charging decision has been announced in any of them, and no one involved has been charged with a crime.

Where a round entered is no longer a disputed claim. It is a documented finding by the West Tennessee Regional Forensic Center, and it now sits in the public record alongside the official account of an armed confrontation. The two are not necessarily in conflict. Determining whether they are is the work the investigations exist to do, and none of that work has produced a public document until now.

Why It Matters for Memphis

The task force has operated in Memphis since September 2025 under a federal deployment this site has covered from its first day, and the accountability machinery around its uses of force has produced, until now, no public documents at all. The first one to surface came from the morgue, obtained by reporters, rather than from the TBI, the Guard, or the task force. Whatever the full report shows, how it reached the public is itself the story of how this deployment is being overseen.