Have you ever had a perfectly normal Saturday ruined by someone else’s terrible decision? Now imagine sitting in your car outside Walmart, minding your business, and suddenly hearing a gunshot. That is exactly what happened to a Memphis woman at around 7 p.m. on a Saturday evening.
According to a court affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, the woman was parked in the lot of a Walmart on Austin Peay Highway in Memphis, Tennessee, when a bullet slammed into the rear passenger door of her 2013 Audi A4. She had not done a single thing wrong. She was just sitting there in her car at Walmart.
The Shot Came From Inside the Vehicle Next Door
When the woman looked around, trying to figure out what had just happened, she spotted a white Chevrolet sedan parked nearby. The man inside, who was alone in the car, appeared to have some kind of injury to one of his hands. Before anyone could ask any questions, he drove off.
Officers from the Memphis Police Department responded to the scene, spoke with the woman, and confirmed the damage to her Audi. They recovered a bullet fragment from inside the vehicle. At this point, everyone had a pretty good idea that this was not a random stray shot from somewhere across town.
Investigators did not have to look far. They tracked the shooter to the emergency room of a nearby hospital, where 23-year-old Elijah Jones had checked in with a gunshot wound to his hand, per the affidavit. Outside in the hospital parking lot, officers reportedly located his white 2017 Chevrolet Impala. The same car the woman had described.
What Officers Found Inside That Impala
When officers looked inside Jones’ vehicle, they found a 10 mm Smith and Wesson M&P handgun sitting on the front passenger seat. On the floorboard was a spent shell casing. The gun, the casing, the timing, the matching vehicle description: it was all there.
Jones reportedly told officers that he had been sitting in the driver’s seat when he reached under his seat to grab his gun. According to the affidavit, “as he picked up the weapon, it discharged, and the gunshot struck his hand.” He then drove himself to the hospital. The bullet, meanwhile, had already found a new home inside a stranger’s car door.
It is worth noting that Tennessee is an open carry state, meaning residents are legally allowed to carry a firearm in public without a permit. However, state law still requires that firearms be handled responsibly, and discharging a weapon in a way that endangers others can absolutely lead to criminal charges, regardless of how the discharge happened. So, accidental or not, the law is not particularly sympathetic when a bullet ends up in someone else’s car.
The Charges Jones Now Faces
Jones was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment regarding the discharge of a firearm from within a motor vehicle, according to court records. He was booked into the Shelby County jail, and his bond was set at $100,000. He was scheduled to appear in court the following Tuesday.
Reckless endangerment in Tennessee is typically classified as a Class A misdemeanor, but when a deadly weapon is involved, the charge can be elevated to a Class E felony, which carries a potential sentence of one to six years. The presence of a loaded firearm in this situation means Jones could be looking at significantly more than a slap on the wrist.
The woman in the Audi, for her part, walked away physically unharmed. Unfortunately, her car did not get the same outcome. A bullet fragment lodged in your rear passenger door is not exactly the kind of souvenir anyone wants from a Walmart run.
The Bigger Picture Nobody Wants to Talk About
Cases like this one pop up more often than most people realize. Accidental discharges in vehicles, parking lots, and public spaces happen regularly across the country, and they rarely make national headlines unless someone ends up seriously hurt. The Gun Violence Archive, which tracks firearm incidents across the United States, has logged hundreds of unintentional shooting incidents (563) in 2026 alone as of early June.
What makes this particular story stick is how ordinary the setting was. A Saturday evening. A busy Walmart parking lot. A woman sitting quietly in her car. Nobody in that lot signed up to be part of a firearms incident that night.
The takeaway is pretty straightforward. Guns are not something you reach for casually from under a car seat. Loaded firearms and poor handling are a combination that tends to end badly, and in this case, two people paid for it. One with a hole in his hand, and one with a hole in her door.
