SHELBY COUNTY, TN. (THECOUNT) — Antwon Marquis Freeman Jr., the man charged with murder after an unprovoked fatal attack in the Edge District on Monday night, was arrested in 2020 after repeatedly strangling his own grandmother during multiple domestic assaults.
On September 2, 2020, Shelby County Police were dispatched to a domestic assault call located at 1006 Rayner Street in Memphis on reports of a domestic assault. When they arrived, Beverly Williams told investigators that her grandson, Freeman, then 30, had been evicted from the home about a week prior. Williams then advised police that when she returned home after a beauty shop appointment she found Antwon inside the residence. She asked Antwon how he entered the home, and he admitted that he broke into the residence. When Williams told him to leave the property, he refused to leave, shoved her, and then began to strangle her.
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Williams reported that Antwon had choked her several times prior to this incident, and she was afraid for her life. Her other grandson, Rodercus Freeman, informed Officer Holmes he witnessed his brother attack their grandmother and that he had become increasingly more violent toward her. Sergeant Davis was called in by request of Antwon after he requested a supervisor because he felt that he was being wrongfully arrested, reports ScoopMemphis.
At the time, Freeman was arrested and charged with domestic assault.
In the current attack, a man and his wife were walking down 500 block of Monroe Avenue in the Edge District, when Freeman approach the man, whom he did not know, and hit him in the head with a cinderblock on Monday night.
The injured man was seen running down Monroe with two other men, described as “Good Samaritans,” who followed Freeman to a nearby construction site.
The men spotted Freeman near a vacant building. That’s when officers were flagged down by one of the men who gave chase and officers approached the suspect, later identified as Freeman.
Police say Freeman’s hands were covered in blood and he had a long kitchen knife under his shirt.
Officers then checked the vacant buildings for the second man who chased the suspect and found him unresponsive with several stab wounds.
The unidentified victim was pronounced dead of stab wound injuries.
According to the police report, Freeman told officers that he was walking down Monroe Avenue when someone threw a rock at him and yelled racial slurs, according to ActionNews5.
He then says he believed the man he saw walking was that person, so he attacked him with a cinder block.
While hiding from the two men that chased, he heard footsteps and stabbed the person before blacking out, the police report says.
Antwon Freeman is charged with aggravated assault and first-degree murder.
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Geo quick facts: Shelby County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 927,644. It is the state’s largest county both in terms of population and geographic area. Its county seat is Memphis, a port on the Mississippi River and the second most populous city in Tennessee – Wikipedia.