Marcus DeShon Anderson, a 36-year-old Black man, was killed on June 9, 2015, in the Parkway Village area of Memphis, Tennessee, on a quiet stretch of Barbwood Drive where neighbors were already uneasy about violence. Police were called to the 3400 block that Tuesday morning after witnesses believed someone was on a back porch and not moving; when officers arrived, they found Anderson on the back patio with an apparent gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
In the first hours after the shooting, the case felt like it had more questions than answers. Investigators had not released suspect information, and there were no arrests at that point. The neighborhood context hung in the air, too: police noted that another man, 43-year-old Harold Kimbrough, had been shot and killed on the same road weeks earlier, found behind a vacant home in the 3300 block of Barbwood Drive.
Nine days later, the investigation narrowed to a single name. Memphis police arrested Melvin Summerville, 37, saying they believed he was the person who killed Anderson. Summerville was charged with voluntary manslaughter and was expected to face a judge, while police continued to frame the case around the same core scene on Barbwood Drive: Anderson found outside on the patio with a gunshot wound, the kind of death that turns an ordinary morning into something the whole block remembers.
As the news rippled out, Anderson’s family prepared to say goodbye in ways that were both public and personal. An obituary published days later identified him as a Memphis native and listed his surviving children and siblings, along with funeral arrangements in Memphis.
