MEMPHIS — An off-duty officer was not taking “official police action” when he was killed in a shootout with a neighbor, and there is not enough evidence to charge the neighbor with murder, a police chief said Tuesday.
Police Director Toney Armstrong told reporters that witnesses gave authorities different stories about what happened when the officer, who was on his way to work, “exchanged words” his neighbor, Lorenzo Clark, 36.
It is not clear what the two men were talking about when the conversation escalated or who fired the first shot, Armstrong said.
Officer Terence Olridge, 31, died after the shootout Sunday afternoon. Clark is being held on $100,000 bond on a charge of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
Olridge was shot multiple times as the encounter turned into an exchange of gunfire on a typically quiet street where children play in the street and ride bicycles in Cordova, a Memphis suburb.