Randall M. Gardner, 56, a White man, was in the parking lot of the Crossroads Country Store along Highway 81 South in Jonesborough, Tennessee, when gunfire shattered the late-summer morning on August 25, 2020. Deputies with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to the scene at about 9:38 a.m., as word spread that a man had been shot outside the convenience store.
First responders found Gardner wounded and rushed him by ambulance to Johnson City Medical Center.
Despite the effort to save him, authorities said he was later pronounced dead at the hospital, turning what began as a frantic emergency call into a homicide investigation that would hang over the small stretch of highway where the store sits.
As the day unfolded, information remained tightly held. In early reporting, the shooting was described as happening around 11 a.m., but officials’ own account placed the dispatch earlier in the morning; either way, it was clear the violence had erupted in broad daylight at a place where people stop for gas, snacks, and a few minutes of routine. Sheriff Ed Graybeal told local media there was no threat to the public, and the sheriff’s office said no one had been charged while the investigation continued.
The next day, the sheriff’s office publicly confirmed the victim’s identity and reiterated the basic outline: a shooting in the Crossroads Country Store parking lot, transport to the medical center, and death after arrival. In the official statements and local coverage available from that period, no suspect was named and no arrests or charges were announced in connection with Gardner’s killing, leaving the story suspended at the point where investigators were still working to determine who pulled the trigger and why.
