Felon With Violent Past, Pending Cases, Convicted of Evading Police on I-240

Aug. 4, 2022 – A Memphis man who served nearly 20 years in prison for murder and who has pending cases for other violent offenses since his release was convicted Wednesday of trying to escape arrest on the interstate, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

A Criminal Court jury convicted Anthony Carpenter, 43, on a felony count of intentionally evading arrest in a motor vehicle. He is set for sentencing on Aug. 30 and is being held in the Shelby County Jail.

Carpenter was arrested on May 3, 2019, on I-240 when he began driving in the emergency vehicle lane near Airways Boulevard to avoid a backup because of a traffic accident. Police working the accident signaled for him to pull over to the shoulder, which he did briefly before speeding away. He was caught a short time later when he was stopped by the traffic backup.

He was free on bond at the time on an aggravated assault charge involving a Raleigh-area car dealer who identified Carpenter, a former customer, as the person who shot him in the arm in February of 2019, on the dealership lot. The victim spent five days in the hospital and underwent seven hours of surgery. The case is pending in Criminal Court.

In January of this year, Carpenter was charged in Mississippi with shooting an off-duty Memphis police lieutenant outside his Olive Branch residence. Carpenter was arrested the following day at his home in Memphis where officers found an AR pistol and more than 200 rounds of ammunition.

Carpenter was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting a 19-year-old man in 1998, and served 19 years of a 23-year sentence. He was released in 2017.

The trial this week was handled by Asst. Dist. Attys. Robert Steele and Fredricka Brown of the District Attorney’s Vertical Team 4 which prosecutes cases in General Sessions Division 12 and in Criminal Court Division 4.