The vid I link to states that the police “gave chase.” Why did it take so long to put him down if there was a hot pursuit?
Almost certainly that vid is incorrect. I heard of intial reports of police “giving chase” from the recruiting station, but they all seem to be based on wishful thinking or assumptions.
The eyewitness of the shooting at the recruiting center says that the shooter left the area fairly rapidly, and immediately got on 153 heading north. She does not mention anything about a pursuit. 153 at that point is essentially a freeway, or close to it. It would be about a 8 minute drive. The recruiting center and strip mall are only a couple of hundred yards from 153, and the NOSC seems to be only about 1/4 mile or so off of the connecting freeway.
The entrance to the NOSC was not guarded.
The “ear witness” that was outside the NOSC says that she heard a rapid number of shots, then shortly after heard sirens as police converged on the NOSC.
If the shooter was being pursued from the recruiting center, the “ear witness” would likely have heard sirens *before* the shooting.
Most likely that the shooter got to the NOSC before the police caught up with him, and had some period of time to start shooting there before the police arrived.
It probably wasn't a *hot pursuit.* It's very likely that the witnesses at the strip mall recruiting center gave a description of the color, make and model of the vehicle the shooter was in, maybe even a license number, and they were looking for that fairly distinctive vehicle. Note too that when Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, there was an almost-immediate report that the gunman had made his escape in a white Ford Mustang. Nobody seems to know exactly where that report came from, and nope, the Memphis PD never made a stop on such a vehicle.
Tennessee law has changed since I lived in Memphis. Now you can carry a loaded rifle or shotgun in your car in Tennessee; when I lived there, carry of a loaded longgun was unlawful, even for those of us with a concealed handgun permit.
Accordingly, I carried two spare guns in my truck: a shoulder-stocked Mauser C96 *broomhandle* pistol, legally a *handgun* under federal law, in case I needed something that would reach out a little farther than the usual handgun/s I carried, [and with a 20-round magazine!] and an M1 Garand rifle...that was not carried loaded, but did have the bolt locked in the *open, ready to reload* position. And with a two-clip M1 carbine magazine pouch on the buttstock.