The parents of Terry Randle Jr. are convinced his slaying was the result of a false rumor that the college-bound star athlete and his older brother had been involved in a fatal shooting three weeks before.
And they’re angry about the Greenwood police chief’s suggestion that the shocking mid-day killing of their son on July 23 was the product of a longstanding rivalry between two neighborhood gangs.
“That’s a lie. He don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Tammie Quinn, Randle’s mother, about comments that Chief Terrence Craft made at a Greenwood civic club this past week.
“My son had excelled academically, athletically, he had a full scholarship to a college in Missouri,” she said. “He was not on the street.”
On the day of the killing, the 18-year-old — who went by the nickname “T.J.” — spent the morning fishing with his only sibling, Jacori Randle. Fishing was what T.J. loved best, other than playing sports. Afterward, they went shopping at Walmart, then drove in T.J.’s Chevrolet Impala to Waffle House to pick up a to-go order. Soon after leaving the restaurant’s parking lot shortly before noon, a barrage of semi-automatic gunfire erupted from another car also traveling east on U.S. 82, according to witnesses and authorities.
T.J. veered onto the frontage road as the assailant’s car sprayed what one witness estimated as 50 to 60 bullets. Authorities believe at some point Jacori exited the passenger side of the vehicle and returned fire with a .40-caliber handgun. Both brothers were shot multiple times, and T.J.’s car rolled down the Yazoo River embankment near the highway’s intersection with West Claiborne Avenue.
Quinn and her husband, Terry Randle Sr., have other theories about what transpired that morning. They believe the shooting was premeditated, that their sons were being stalked and that more than the one vehicle for which police have been looking was involved in the assailants’ attack.
“You can’t tell me that 50 to 60 bullets that were fired that it came from one gun. You can’t tell me that. ... You can’t tell me it just came from one individual and one car,” said Quinn.
Craft said police are pursuing both of those possibilities, although so far only one suspect has been detained. The man was still being held for investigation as of Friday in the Leflore County Jail, although charges had not been filed.
Before authorities could arrive at the crime scene, Jacori called his parents, telling them to hurry, that his younger brother had been shot.
“Nobody wants to receive that phone call. Nobody. Especially a mother about their child,” said Quinn, her eyes moistening and voice choking.
“It’s a hurt that’s unbearable.”
Terry Randle Sr. said he knew soon after arriving at the scene that T.J. was not going to survive his wounds, which included a bullet that penetrated his brain.
The brothers were airlifted to trauma units at different hospitals — T.J. to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, and Jacori to the Elvis Presley Trauma Center in Memphis with what turned out to be non-life-threatening wounds to his back.
Terry Sr. said the doctors in Jackson did all they could to try to save their youngest son. “They tried. They fought for him. They fought hard. But too much damage was done to his brain.”
T.J. was kept on life support for two days, long enough for doctors to harvest his heart, kidneys and lungs for transplant patients. That final gift typified the type of person their child was, said his parents.
“When I say this kid was loved by everybody, I mean everybody,” Quinn said.
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T.J.’s parents are convinced their son’s death was a misguided retribution killing, the result of street talk about another slaying in Greenwood, which occurred on July 1.
At about 1:20 a.m. that morning, 32-year-old Christopher Reed was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting at the corner of Johnson and Main streets, a regular intersection of gunfire in the city. Seven others were wounded in the incident, for which police have yet to make any arrests.
T.J.’s parents said they remember the incident well because both of their sons were in their home on Clay Avenue when a call came reporting the shooting.
They said rumors began circulating that the two Randle brothers were involved.
It was, according to their parents, “a lie.”
At least one of the brothers, however, did have some history with gunfire.
Almost two years earlier, Jacori had been arrested following a shooting incident in a parking lot near The Landing convenience store. He and another suspect, Sammionte Kent, were each charged with two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly wounding two others.
In May, Jacori, 23, pleaded guilty to a lesser felony charge of accessory after the fact to aggravated assault for allegedly helping Kent and unnamed others avoid arrest by transporting them away from the crime scene. Jacori received from Circuit Judge Carol White-Richard a non-adjudicated probation for three years. If he honors the conditions of the probation, he will be eligible to have the conviction expunged from his record.
A member of the Mississippi National Guard, Jacori is expected to enter full-time active duty in the Army, according to court records dealing with his criminal case.
T.J. himself was initially suspected in an August 2020 shooting incident when he was not quite 17 years old. The shooting, in which two other teenagers were wounded in the Glendale subdivision, produced a high-speed chase by law enforcement officers that ended 10 miles away in the front drive of Mississippi Valley State University. T.J.was a passenger in the fleeing car, according to authorities, and was arrested, along with the female driver.
Leflore County Undersheriff Ken Spencer said on Friday that the case against T.J.was never presented to a grand jury because “investigators did not produce enough evidence to tie him to the shooting in Glendale.”
Craft, the Greenwood police chief, has said that most of the shootings in Greenwood, including the fatal shooting of T.J., are the result of a decade-long rivalry between two neighborhood gangs — one in the McLaurin Street area and the other around W.J. Bishop Apartments.
Although the three-bedroom frame home where T.J. spent all of his life is just a stone’s throw from those apartments, his parents assert that he was not part of any neighborhood gang.
From the time he was 6 years old, he played organized sports, excelling in baseball, basketball and football. A trophy case in one room of the family’s home and a bookcase in another are crowded with medals, trophies, autographed baseballs and other mementos he received for his athletic exploits in Little League and at Amanda Elzy High School, from which he graduated in May. The night before he was shot, he was among the high school athletes honored as Future Champions from Leflore County.
He had landed a football scholarship to Culver-Stockton College, a private Christian liberal arts school in Canton, Missouri.
His father said the plans were for his son to play inside linebacker for the NAIA school and to play on its baseball team as well.
His parents were supposed to take T.J. this weekend to the college and help him get settled in his dorm. Instead they are still waiting on his body from the backlogged Mississippi Crime Lab, where it was taken for an autopsy, so they can plan his funeral.
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T.J.’s parents want justice for their son, and they said they won’t stop demanding it until those responsible for his death are in prison.
“He didn’t just die. They took him away from us,” his mother said.
An administrative assistant at Greenwood Leflore Hospital, Quinn is the main breadwinner in the family. Her husband, a diabetic with kidney disease, is disabled and has to take dialysis three days a week.
She has not been pleased with the speed of the investigation or the Greenwood Police Department’s responsiveness to the family.
She said it was a couple of days after the shooting before the parents first heard from investigators. She claimed that some of her calls to authorities to ask about the progress of the case have not been returned and some of her text messages either ignored or not answered until the next day.
When she does hear from officers, she said, this is what they tell her: “No, we don’t have anything yet. We’re looking. We’re not going to sleep, we’re not going to rest until we find who did this.”
She’s skeptical they mean it.
“I want to believe it. I want to trust them. But right now my trust is very thin,” she said.
“I have to see something. I have to see action.”
Quinn said that those investigating the slaying might as well get used to hearing from her and other family members, for years if that’s what it takes.
“The only way we don’t get them is they change their phone number.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
