MEMPHIS, Tenn. - 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 AP, citing the autopsy report, described the man 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.

An attorney for the man's family responded publicly to the autopsy findings on August 28, per Action News 5.

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.