Law enforcement reports that a shooting outside Yo Gotti’s Prive restaurant in Memphis has left two people dead and at least five more people injured.
The shooting happened after the restaurant closed its doors at 11 pm on Wednesday. Memphis police say that the shooting was related to a verbal and physical altercation that took place inside the restaurant.
Onlookers say that the shooting was over in a matter of minutes. Police arrived at the scene of the shooting at 11.17 pm and found one individual dead and another one in critical condition-but he died from his injuries at a nearby hospital.
In addition, there were five other victims- four males (ages 30, 31, 35, and 37) and a 25-year-old female who arrived at nearby hospitals in their own vehicles- their conditions were listed as stable and not life-threatening.
After talking to the surviving victims, it appears that the shooting arose from an interaction inside the restaurant. Footage from inside the restaurant reveals there was an interaction between one individual in a red jacket and another one in a blue jacket. Soon this resulted in a tense standoff between at least half a dozen people; this was followed by the guy in the red jacket pushing the other group and someone tossing a drink-resulting in a melee.
Security did separate the individuals, but the fighting spilled outside the restaurant into the parking lot where it was caught on tape. At some point, a man is shot, and the guy in the blue jacket is hopping and screaming. He then opens fire with a semi-automatic hitting an unknown male in the back several times. The CCTV footage then shows the guy in the blue jacket limping away from the parking lot as the bodies of two individuals lie motionless on the pavement.
The shootings also left a large bullet hole on the driver’s side window of a pick truck in the parking lot.
So far, law enforcement has not mentioned how many shots were fired and who the suspects are.
Arthur Horne, Yo Gotti’s lawyer, issued a statement to the Memphis news outlet WREG and revealed that this was the first time an incident like this had occurred at Prive in over ten years. He also pointed out that the shooting happened outside the restaurant.
The lawyer added, “Nothing happened inside the restaurant. Despite any conflicting reports, they were closing, and this happened at the end of the evening in the parking lot.”
The restaurant, Privy, was purchased by Yo Gotti for his mother. Yo Gotti himself was not at the restaurant at the time of the shooting.
The restaurant shooting comes only three days after six individuals, including three young students, were killed in a shooting rampage at The Covenant Christian School in Nashville. That shooting took place over 14 minutes, and the shooter was killed by law enforcement.
