MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A concerned mother has been searching for answers since losing her son during a traffic stop with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) in December 2022.
Ashley Mckenzie Smith said not much has been done since her son Jaylin McKenzie was shot and killed during a traffic stop and that she still does not know exactly what happened, even after driving six hours from Atlanta to try to get details from MPD.
Jaylin was in Memphis visiting from Atlanta to see his dad.
Smith said he was in college, majoring in marketing, but he also had a passion for music.
"It’s definitely day-by-day, second-by-second," Smith said. "The anxiety of not knowing what happened and feeling like the Memphis Police Department and the TBI are not being very open to letting us know anything is really disheartening."
She said is still in the dark about the sequence of events that lead to her 20-year-old son's death.
Smith said she got an unexpected call from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) the morning of Dec. 17 only to learn a mother’s worst fear.
“Everything was going really really fast at that moment," Smith said. "I don’t think when I actually took the call that I understood what he was saying. Then my husband went on to take the call. He said it again to my husband and I heard him."
The TBI said Memphis Police officers tried to pull a car over near American Way, but the person behind the wheel drove off, and when they got to Cochese Avenue, three people ran from the car.
That is when officers chased a man down the street before someone started shooting.
“They want to say that when the boys jumped out of the car, they were all armed — dressed in black — and that my son Jaylin shot at them and they returned fire,” Smith said.
Still, hearing that account from the TBI is not enough for Smith.
“We don’t even know if at this point what’s going on with the officer — if he’s on leave, if he’s on desk duty,” she said.
Including the incident with Jaylin McKenzie, five people have died during encounters with MPD since December 2022. The death of Tyre Nichols also resulted from a traffic stop that took place January.
The family’s attorney Andre Warton said he has been working to find out why McKenzie and his friends got stopped in the first place.
“It can be problematic though if you’re in a certain kind of car and you’re stopped without a legal basis," Warton said. "Those are the questions we’re asking. Why was this vehicle stopped and why did the traffic stop turn deadly? Those are answers that we’re seeking to discover. Body camera [and] in-car video will tell us a little bit about that, but right now we have no basis to know the reason for this traffic stop.”
Memphis City Council recently passed the "Tyre Nichols Justice in Policing Ordinance." It focuses on MPD traffic stops and what is allowed.
ABC24 has also reached out to MPD to find out more about what happened with this January incident. They sent us to the TBI who said this investigation is still ongoing.
We also reached out to District Attorney Steve Mulroy’s office who said once TBI completes its investigation, the Justice Review Unit will review the case and make any recommendations, if any, to DA Mulroy.