Now-former Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson lost a high school friend—as well as a former mentor—to gun violence. The issue remains deeply personal.
When measured by the way he brightened kids’ lives, Larry Thorn was a figure of vital importance at the A. Maceo Walker Middle School in Memphis, Tennessee.
Now, in January, Pearson was attending a vigil for another victim of gun violence. Pearson had just turned 28 and he was carrying the lesson of the stashed away textbooks into electoral politics. He was a candidate in a special primary for a seat vacated by State Rep. Barbara Cooper. She was a Democrat who had died at 92 in October of last year, but had nonetheless been reelected that November with 78 percent of the vote.
On Pearson’s second day in office, the whole world focused on horrific video released by the Memphis police showing multiple officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols. Pearson was a leading voice in the ensuing protests, but he did not forget Thorn. He still took time to check on Henderson. And he joined the family and other friends who gathered in late March at the boarded-up church where the burnt body had been found, cellphone and wallet gone, car parked two blocks away.
He went on, “I intended to honor The Covenant victims and my own community members during ‘Welcome and Honoring’, but was not given the opportunity to do so.”
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