MEMPHIS, Tenn. — At A&A Furniture in South Memphis, there’s a big sale going on right now, and everything must go, but that was never supposed to include the employees’ sense of safety.
“Innocent people could have got hurt,” Dillion Parnell said.
Parnell works for a company that’s helping the store sell all it’s merchandise so it can re-brand and remodel. He said he was walking through the showroom around 6:30 p.m. Thursday when bullets came flying through the windows.
“Just hit the floor; that’s all I could think,” Parnell said.
Panicked, Parnell and four store employees ran outside.
“We were, I want to say, frantic would be the word, but yes, we were pretty scared,” he said.
And they wanted to know what in the world was going on, but by the time they got out there, everything was calm. Still, they weren’t taking any chances.
“Make sure we stayed clear of the building until the cops got here,” Parnell said.
Witnesses who were outside when it happened said two people driving by the store started yelling at each other, then shooting at each other from their cars. Police don’t know if either motorist was hit, but they do know both kept going and were last seen a couple blocks down from the store at Lamar and Airways.
“You know, if they’re having a confrontation, it shouldn’t go to bullets,” Parnell said.
Thankfully, no one inside the store was hit — a close call to be sure.
“I normally have my family up here with me,” Parnell said. “We’re grateful they weren’t here. We’re grateful we didn’t have a store packed full of people. I mean, we have a big sale going on. I mean, just if it would have happened a couple hours earlier, we would have had 20-30 people in here.”
Witnesses don’t know what the two drivers were arguing about, and Parnell doesn’t care what it was. He wants those motorists caught and said there’s no excuse for putting innocent people in danger.
“I really hope justice is served,” he said.
