It was Labor Day weekend, the seam between the dog days of a pit-bull summer and the open road of a hopefully cooler fall, the beginning of a new cycle of county government with the swearing-in of officials and of a pending city election season with early announcements from mayoral candidates.
Still, it felt like a lull, and then suddenly the vacuum was filled with a sinister event, the kidnapping and apparent foul play wreaked on teacher and young mother Eliza Fletcher while she was jogging on a city street, and, wherever you went, that was all anybody was talking about.
It was the subject of discussion Saturday night at The Magnolia Room in the Overton Square district, where newly inaugurated District Attorney General Steve Mulroy had invited a few guests to share in an “Almost Newlyweds” gathering, the reenactment of the nuptials of his daughter Molly and her Moroccan husband, Abdellah.
Mulroy, the perfect host, lost himself in the revelry and line dancing and in a joyous chorus, along with the rest of his Brooklyn-bred family, of “New York, New York.” But some corner of his brain had to be occupied by this ominous new development, joining there such preoccupations as he has about a forthcoming hearing on the fate of two young carjacking suspects accused recently of killing Dr. Autura Eason-Williams, a revered local Methodist cleric.
Amy Weirich, Mulroy’s predecessor, whom he defeated in the recent county election, had called for one juvenile suspect, whom she had previously put into a restorative-justice program, to be transferred to adult Criminal Court to be tried for the carjacking murder. The matter broke very late in the election campaign, and Mulroy, as the new DA, in tandem with new Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon, will have to make the ultimate recommendation about the transfer, to Criminal Court of one or both juvenile suspects on or after a hearing on the psychological circumstances of the two, which is scheduled for September 12th in Juvenile Court. A third accomplice in the crime, who has already reached adulthood, is also part of the equation.
And now, on top of that conundrum, the Fletcher affair, which has gripped the nation as well as the city, has further dramatized the issue of crime in Memphis. No rest for the weary.
• Candidates for Memphis mayor in 2022 aren’t getting much rest, either. Two of them made formal entries into the race last week — local NAACP head Van Turner at an organized announcement at Health Sciences Park and Downtown Memphis Commission president/CEO Paul Young via an online post.
Turner, who recently left the Shelby County Commission after serving two terms, had his coming-out on a platform erected on the former long-term site of the grave and statue of Confederate Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Turner is the president of the nonprofit which, in cooperation with city government, took over the park grounds and authorized the removal and relocation of the statue and the remains of Forrest and his wife.
• The aforementioned Weirich is already at work as special counsel on the staff of DA Mark Davidson in the 25th judicial district, which serves the several rural West Tennessee counties immediately adjoining Shelby. She began her duties last Thursday at a salary, conforming with state guidelines, of $139,908, only 18 percent less than she made as Shelby DA.