TENNESSEE — – A Criminal Court jury convicted a 32-year-old man of first-degree murder in the 2015 shooting death of Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton in the Parkway Village area of southeast Memphis, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.
Following a weeklong trial, defendant Tremaine Wilbourn then was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility for parole for the murder of the veteran officer.
In addition to first-degree murder, the jury convicted him of using a firearm in the commission of a dangerous felony, convicted felon in possession of a handgun and carjacking, a crime that occurred after Officer Bolton was killed.
“We are grateful to the jurors for listening carefully to the disturbing facts of this case and returning a just verdict,” said Gen. Weirich. “Officer Bolton bravely served and protected his country and his community, and for that we are all in his debt. There are no words to express what his loss means to his family, to his fellow officers and to the city.”
The incident occurred shortly after 9 p.m. on Aug. 1, 2015, in the 3800 block of Summerlane Ave., a residential area in the vicinity of South Perkins and Cottonwood.
Officer Bolton had made a traffic stop involving two men in a Mercedes that was illegally parked. During the stop, one of the men, Wilbourn, pulled a gun and began firing at the officer, striking him eight times.
Wilbourn fled on foot, carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint a short distance away on Clearbrook and eventually turned himself in two days later.
At the time, he was on supervised release from federal prison where he had served a 10-year sentence for armed bank robbery. Last year, Wilbourn pled guilty in federal court to the 2015 armed carjacking and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He will be sentenced later for the state carjacking conviction and the weapons offenses by Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee.
