FirstAlerts
Mass Casualty Incidents

Knoxville crime scene technician shot while processing shooting scene

Cody Lawson underwent surgery and remains hospitalized after shots were fired at her and a KPD officer in South Knoxville, the Knoxville Police Department said. A man is in custody.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Jul 13, 2026, 4:25 a.m. ETWritten Aug 15, 2026, 5:37 p.m. ET

More on this incident

A Crime Scene Technician was shot and wounded while processing a shooting scene in South , the department said. The department identified the wounded technician as KPD Crime Scene Technician Cody Lawson. As of 11:50 a.m. on July 13, 2026, the said Lawson had undergone surgery and remained hospitalized. According to the department, officers and Forensics Unit staff were processing the scene and canvassing for evidence at an occupied home at 2300 Jones Street, following a report at around 11 p.m. on Sunday, July 12, 2026 that shots had been fired into the home. No injuries were reported in that shooting, the department said. Just after midnight, police said, a man fired multiple shots at a KPD Officer and a Crime Scene Technician from an adjacent wood line. The said the man has since been identified as , and that he is . The department said the incident is not active. "This incident demonstrates the substantial risk our officers and staff take every day and every shift," Chief Paul Noel said. "It is only by the grace of God that Cody or one of our officers was not killed today, and I am profoundly grateful for that. Nonetheless, Cody has a long road of recovery ahead. We will support her, her family and her colleagues in the Forensics Unit however we can along the way, and we ask that the community uplift Cody in the days, weeks and months ahead." The and its Forensics Unit responded to the scene.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 115 Aug 2026, 21:27current

    First published.

  2. Version 115 Aug 2026, 21:37current

    First published.

  3. Version 115 Aug 2026, 21:34current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.