The deaths of Lashaunda Boyd and Jimmy Ford turned a South Memphis sidewalk into a homicide scene and opened a case that now reaches from neighborhood witnesses to county court.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — What began as a midday walk on a South Memphis sidewalk ended with two people dead, one man jailed and a neighborhood intersection folded into a homicide case that now centers on a former relationship, witness accounts and a shooting police say was caught on video.
In the days since the March 22 attack near East Dison Avenue and Carnegie Street, the names of the victims have carried the story alongside the charges. Lashaunda Boyd, 36, was pronounced dead at the scene, and Jimmy Ford, 37, died later at a hospital after the same shooting, according to police accounts cited in published reports. Verdell Pegues, 41, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and related gun offenses. The case remains early, but the basic public record has already split into two tracks: one dealing with grief, memorials and funerals, and another dealing with bond, arraignment and the mechanics of prosecution.
For neighbors, the public face of the case is the place itself. The intersection named in the reports is not described as a remote lot or a hidden stretch of road. It is a city corner with sidewalks, houses, passing traffic and the sort of ordinary movement that makes daytime violence feel especially close. Police say Boyd and Ford were walking there just before noon when a man approached and opened fire. Investigators allege the shooter then stood over them and fired again. That description has fixed the scene in sharp terms because it suggests both proximity and finality. Officers arrived to find both victims down in the street area with gunshot wounds and recovered 9 mm casings nearby. Whatever later motions are filed in court, the emotional center of the case will likely remain that public moment when two people were hit in the open, in daylight, in a neighborhood others know well.
The victims’ records in memorial and funeral listings add another layer that court filings cannot. Boyd’s obituary and online memorials mark March 22 as the day she died. Ford’s memorial listing places his death on the same date as part of the same burst of gun violence. Those notices are sparse, but their sparseness says something too: once criminal cases enter public view, the dead are often reduced first to names, ages and dates before fuller stories emerge from family, churches or funeral services. That is especially true in early reporting, when police facts arrive faster than personal histories. In this case, the legal file names Boyd as the former partner of the accused and Ford as the man walking with her. The memorial record does the opposite. It strips away the case theory and leaves only the fact that two people were alive before noon and gone by the end of the day.
The prosecution’s version of events reaches back before the shooting. Reports based on Shelby County records say Boyd filed two domestic violence-related complaints on March 18. She said Pegues assaulted her on March 15 and, two days later, pointed what appeared to be a 9 mm handgun at her and threatened, “If I can’t have you, no one can.” Police later said witnesses identified the suspected gunman by the nickname “RaRa,” and one witness said he saw the shooting and later identified Pegues. Investigators also said video footage showed the attack. Those details matter because they turn the case from a neighborhood tragedy into a prosecutable sequence with motive, identity evidence and a reported visual record. They also show how quickly a private relationship dispute can move into public violence and then into a formal murder docket.
By the time the case reached court, its language had changed. Boyd and Ford became homicide victims. The gun became the basis for firearm counts. The reported threat became evidence of intent. Pegues was charged not only with two counts of first-degree murder but also with reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, employing a firearm with intent to commit a felony and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Published reports say he was being held on a $1 million bond and had a video arraignment after his arrest. Those steps are procedural, but they are how the system begins to answer a neighborhood killing: through bookings, bond decisions, charge lists and future hearings that slowly translate one block’s trauma into a courtroom record.
What comes next may be measured less by breaking-news speed and more by legal patience. Prosecutors will have to organize witness statements, video, ballistic evidence and the earlier domestic violence complaints into a coherent case. Defense lawyers will examine each piece for weakness. Families and friends, meanwhile, move through a different calendar, one set by burial, remembrance and the long absence that follows a violent death. That divide is visible in nearly every homicide case, but it is especially sharp here because the public knows both the street corner and the quoted threat. One belongs to the scene. The other belongs to the relationship behind it. Together they form the frame of a case that is now both deeply personal and fully public.
As of April 21, the case remained in its early court phase, with Pegues jailed and the victims’ deaths still newly recorded in memorial notices. The next milestone will come when prosecutors return to court and begin testing the evidence in a more formal setting.
Author note: Last updated April 21, 2026.