MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Tears are still flowing, but reality is starting to set in a day after a man was shot and killed by Shelby County Sheriff’s Deputies.
His family says they are not buying what they are being told happened.
“They pegged him as being ignorant by ramming the cars and he reached for a weapon and all that other stuff. That’s not him,” Alicia Johnson, the victim’s sister-in-law, said.
The Johnson family remembers Bryan Johnson very differently than how he’s being portrayed.
“He knew how to make people laugh when things were rough. He was a stand up guy who loved his wife and loved his children,” Johnson said.
They say there’s no way this man would crash his car into deputies and pull a gun on them.
“To go reaching for a gun, that’s not him. There are many things my brother was, but one thing he wasn’t was stupid. His mother didn’t raise him to be stupid,” Johnson said.
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But undercover narcotics deputies say otherwise.
They say they pulled Johnson over Wednesday after noon on Decatur Street while a warrant to search his home was served across town.
They say they stopped him because they believed he was dealing marijuana – that’s when he allegedly slammed on the gas, reached for a gun and deputies had no choice but to shoot.
Another deputy was hit with a bullet during the chaos but will be okay.
“We want answers. We want the truth,” the victim’s sister-in-law said.
Johnson doesn’t deny the drug accusations, because she says her brother-in-law has been to jail on drug-related charges before.
But she’s surprised he would react so drastically to being pulled over and says the family will keep fighting to find their truth.
“We need answers, because that’s how we’ll get our closure,” Johnson said.
The family says they want the state to investigate how things were handled and they want someone to be held accountable.
The TBI is investigating the case.
