In the early morning hours of July 9, 2021, a dispute outside a Super 8 motel on Murfreesboro Pike in South Nashville turned deadly, claiming the life of 27-year-old Twuan West Jr. West, a Black man from Clarksville, was at the motel when an argument erupted around 5:15 a.m. involving another man and a woman. The disagreement, which authorities later described as being related to prostitution, escalated tragically, and West was fatally shot at the scene.
The man and woman involved in the altercation fled the location in an SUV following the shooting.
Metro Nashville Police Department's Homicide Unit immediately began an investigation into the killing. Detectives pursued leads, noting that a witness had seen the individuals who fled before, suggesting they were local to the area. Their investigation led them to identify 36-year-old Anthony Darnell Stewart as the suspected shooter. The woman present during the argument was also identified by investigators and was treated as a witness in the case against Stewart.
More than a month after the fatal shooting, on August 19, 2021, a team of detectives and officers, including members of the Special Response Team and the TITANS Unit, located and apprehended Stewart. He was discovered hiding in a cleverly concealed space—a false chimney in the basement of a residence on Coleridge Court in Antioch. During the arrest, authorities recovered two firearms from the home. Stewart was subsequently charged with the murder of Twuan West and was held in the Metro Jail on a $1,000,000 bond.
