MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When it comes to Wednesday's shooting spree, we all should want to dig deeper for answers to questions that may not be easy to get.
The biggest of which is, how could a 19-year-old, a kid, really, be capable of such evil? That's the only word to describe what happened.
We know Ezekiel Kelly was no stranger to the juvenile court system and that somewhere, someone, or probably several people, failed him. But by failing Kelly, our judicial system also let all of us down.
In 2020, he was accused of attempted first-degree murder. I want to know the name of the judge who allowed the plea deal down to an aggravated assault.
Even that lesser conviction was supposed to put Kelly behind bars for three years. Yet somewhere, someone let Kelly out of jail just after 11 months. Last March, in fact.
So, had he been locked up, the three who perished would still be alive tonight. I can promise in the days and weeks ahead, ABC24 won't be part of the crowd just blaming a faceless system.
We're going to use this tragedy to learn where the system broke down and the names of the people who made the decisions.