Man dead, officer wounded in Memphis library shooting 

A shooting on Thursday afternoon at a local library in East Memphis left one person dead and a police officer in “extremely critical condition,” authorities said. 

The Memphis Police Department responded to a call reporting a man trespassing at a business in the 5100 block of Poplar at around 12:32 p.m. on Thursday. 

About 30 minutes later, the same man got into a confrontation at the Popla-White Station Library According to Keli McAlister, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He was approached by two police officers to try to quell the situation. 

However, the man pulled out a gun and shot one of the police officers. A second police officer responded by fatally shooting the man, McAlister said. The man was pronounced dead on the scene. 

The officer that was wounded was taken to Regional One Hospital, where he remains in “extremely critical condition,” according to the Memphis Police Department. 

According to Brad Winchester, a regular at the library, the two police officers were questioning a man near the library’s computer bank, when he heard the gunshots. 

“I’d made it around to the area where I read my books,” Mr. Winchester said. “I’d gotten two pages into the book and the shooting started.”

Winchester immediately moved behind a bookcase, along with a female patron, to cover themselves from the gunshots. When he looked up, he saw one officer lying on the ground and the other trying to help him. 

“The officer was laying face up,” he said. “The other police were trying to administer aid. You could visibly see blood.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident.