Lemuel Caldwell Appling, a 41-year-old Black man from Detroit, Michigan, was shot and killed in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the evening of October 28, 2020. Police say the shooting followed a verbal altercation in the 2900 block of Hillside Avenue; officers who arrived found Appling and he was pronounced dead at the scene. The Knoxville Police Department publicly asked for tips as investigators tried to reconstruct what led to the fatal encounter and to identify the shooter.

Investigators later named 46-year-old Eric Bolden of Knoxville as the primary suspect and obtained a warrant charging him with second-degree murder. Bolden evaded arrest for several months. On May 3, 2021, Bolden was himself shot and killed in the 400 block of S. Hembree Street in Knoxville; the warrant in Appling’s case remained active at the time and police opened an investigation into Bolden’s death with no suspects identified in those reports.

Did anyone in Knoxville see or hear anything in the Hillside Avenue area on the night of October 28, 2020, that might help fill gaps in the timeline?