Do you know who murdered Timothy Turner in 1990?
A visit with a friend in Knoxville, Tennessee, ended in tragedy for Timothy Turner, a 29-year-old truck driver from Jackson, in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 22, 1990. His death, the result of a sudden and senseless act of violence, has remained a painful open wound for his loved ones for over three decades, with no one ever held accountable for the crime.
Timothy, known to be a hardworking man, was enjoying a night out with two friends, William Hammond and Kevin Kendricks. Shortly before 3:00 a.m., the three men left a bar located in the 2500 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The area, at that time, had a reputation for being dangerous after dark, a reality that would soon shatter the lives of these three friends. As they were getting into Hammond’s car in the parking lot, their attention was drawn to a man who was erratically firing a small-caliber handgun into the air and at the ground.
Witnesses described the man as an African American male, standing approximately 6 feet 1 inch tall. He was reportedly boasting about having other weapons. As Hammond, who was 25, tried to speed away from the dangerous scene, the man turned his aggression toward their vehicle. He opened fire on the car with what police later believed was a second, more powerful handgun, a .45-caliber, unleashing a terrifying barrage of bullets.
One of those bullets struck Timothy, inflicting a fatal wound. He died from multiple gunshot wounds. His friend, 26-year-old Kevin Kendricks, was also hit by the gunfire but thankfully survived his injuries. Hammond, the driver, was not physically injured and, in a state of panic, sped away in a desperate attempt to get his friends to a hospital. On the way, he managed to flag down two police cars to get help. Hammond told the officers that he did not know the gunman, leading investigators to suspect the shooting was either a random act of violence or a tragic case of mistaken identity.
The Knoxville Police Department launched an immediate investigation into the homicide. In the bar's parking lot, detectives recovered 17 shell casings that came from two different firearms, confirming the use of multiple weapons by the shooter. The investigation also revealed that another man, 32-year-old Jerry Wayne Geeter, had been shot and wounded in the same vicinity that night, though it was never clear if his shooting was directly connected to the attack on Timothy and his friends.
In the hours following the murder, there was a brief glimmer of hope for a breakthrough. Police reportedly chased a suspect through a nearby housing project that afternoon. The man, however, managed to evade capture by leaping from a window and disappearing, leaving the police with few leads. Despite their efforts and the evidence collected at the scene, the trail went cold. No arrests have ever been made in connection with Timothy Turner's murder, and the case has grown cold over the passing years.
The case of Timothy Turner is now listed among the Knoxville Police Department's unsolved homicides. Decades have passed, but the questions surrounding his death remain unanswered. The identity of the man who so callously opened fire in a parking lot, taking a young man's life and injuring another, is still unknown. For Timothy's family and friends, the passage of time has not diminished the pain of their loss or their desire for justice. The investigation remains open, awaiting the one piece of information that could finally solve this senseless crime.
