TN) Robbery suspect killed at diner

TN) Robbery suspect killed at diner

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Robbery suspect killed at diner
2 others die; deaths push '05 total to 72

By Sherri Drake
Contact
July 13, 2005

Shawn Williams pointed to the bullet holes in the wooden walls of the coffee shop where his brother was shot hours earlier Tuesday.

Police say his 22-year-old brother Brandon Underwood and a woman, both armed with knives, came in about 12:45 a.m. and tried to rob the CK's.






An off-duty security guard having coffee in the shop shot Underwood and killed him.

"I heard he didn't get no money or nothing," Williams said, standing on the porch of the restaurant at 3530 Summer, where customers continued to come in for breakfast. "That man that shot him could have just shot him in the arm or leg."

Police say it was a bloody early morning in Memphis with three killings in three hours, bringing the year's homicide tally to 72.

After the shooting on Summer, a Mapco clerk was shot and killed when a man robbed the gas station on New Allen and another man was found dead in his apartment on Getwell.

Police say what's leading to the killings is unsettling.

"These types of incidents are what we want to address," said Sgt. Vince Higgins. "The robberies are turning more violent ... This violence is ending in death, whether you look at the suspect or the victim."

About 3:40 a.m., 50-year-old Jerome Vick, a clerk at the Mapco at 4311 New Allen, was shot and killed as he struggled with a man trying to rob the store, police said.

The suspect drove away in a white 1993-1995 Mazda 626 with the driver's side front hubcap missing.

The suspect is described as a black man, 23 to 25 years old, medium build, about 6-foot-1, with a medium to dark complexion and a slight moustache.

He wore a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood over his head, a black T-shirt underneath, the collar pulled over his mouth. He was armed with a black semi-automatic handgun.

About 10 minutes after the Mapco shooting, police were called to an apartment at 2995 Getwell, where a man said he found his roommate, 27-year-old Marshall Beasley, on the floor, shot in the chest.

All evidence indicates Beasley was the ice cream man arrested last month after undercover officers bought pot from him several times at his ice cream truck in the Parkway Village area, Higgins said.

CK's waitress and cook Joyce Lepard said Tuesday she'd known the man who was killed during the robbery since he was a boy.

"He came in here last week to use the phone," she said. "He said, 'Hi, Ms. Joyce. Bye, Ms. Joyce.'"

Police say Underwood came in the shop wearing a ski mask and held a customer at knifepoint as his female accomplice tried to open the cash register. When she couldn't get the register open, they told a customer, an off-duty security guard, to open it. The security guard, who police didn't identify, drew his gun and shot Underwood.

The unidentified woman is in police custody, but hadn't been charged Tuesday.