DeMya Gordon

DeMya Gordon, a 20-year-old Black woman and young mother from Memphis, Tennessee, was killed on the morning of June 22, 2021. Around 7:25 a.m., residents of a rooming house in the 500 block of E. McLemore St. in South Memphis heard a heated argument followed by a single gunshot. The sounds came from the room DeMya shared with her boyfriend. When police arrived, they found her on the floor with a gunshot wound to her neck. Her 2-year-old daughter was lying on a nearby bed, physically unharmed. DeMya was rushed to a hospital but was pronounced dead a short time later.

The investigation immediately focused on DeMya’s boyfriend, 24-year-old Torian Williams. He was arrested a week after the shooting. In December 2021, a Shelby County Grand Jury indicted Williams on a charge of second-degree murder, and he was held on a $100,000 bond. The case was assigned to the District Attorney's Domestic Violence Unit, which prosecutes homicides and assaults committed by intimate partners.

Instead of going to trial for murder, Williams later accepted a plea deal. He pleaded to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter in connection with DeMya’s death. As a result of the plea, he was sentenced to probation. At the time he killed DeMya, Williams was already on probation for previous convictions of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.

While serving his probation sentence for manslaughter, Williams was again accused of violence. The probation department received calls from an ex-girlfriend and from Williams’ own mother, who both reported that he was physically abusing them and threatening their lives. The case concluded in 2025, when Torian Williams died.