The suspect in the recent deadly shooting of US comedian Reggie Carroll reportedly had been working as security for fellow standup comic Katt Williams, with whom the slain entertainer had toured with.
Tranell Marquise Williams, the man suspected of murdering Carroll on 20 August in Southaven, Mississippi, had also been on the tour in question providing his services at the time of his arrest, according to the news outlet WHBQ.
The station, based in nearby Memphis, Tennessee, attributed the information to three independent sources in a report published Tuesday.
Local police have said officers responding to a shooting at a home on Southaven’s Burton Lane found Carroll, 52, critically wounded. The Baltimore native later died at a hospital in Memphis where he had been brought for emergency treatment.
Southaven police said relatively quickly that they had arrested a man in connection with Carroll’s death and jailed him on a count of murder. But it wasn’t until Monday that they identified that suspect as Tranell Williams, 38.
Police by Monday had posted a 14-day notice requesting occupants leave the Burton Lane home where Carroll had been killed, which was also the address provided for a clothing line owned by Katt Williams, 53, WHBQ reported. Additionally, that home was listed as Tranell Williams’s last known address.
Posts on a social media page belonging to the victim showed him traveling earlier in the year on Katt Williams’s ongoing Heaven on Earth comedy tour.
Carroll’s brother – Kempe Earle – and a friend, Gerald Kelly, told WHBQ they were in disbelief over his killing.
“Man, it’s like your family member, your brother, your closest relative goes out of town, and something happens to them, and you don’t know what exactly,” Earle said. Earle added that Carroll was in Southaven because he was “out there … with Katt Williams”.
Kelly remarked: “I’m still numb – I’m frustrated. I’m ready to go to war. We need answers.”
Katt Williams’s film and television credits include Friday After Next as well as The Boondocks.
Carroll, meanwhile, gained a following while performing in comedy clubs across the US. He appeared on the live variety series Showtime at the Apollo, the 2023 standup special Knockout Kings of Comedy and the 2022 television movie Rent & Go.
One of his most notable credits on the Internet Movie Database was an episode of The Parkers, a sitcom which starred Mo’Nique.
The Oscar-winning actor was among those who paid tribute to Carroll as word of his death spread, saying on social media that she had “an amazing time being on tour together” with him.
“The last time me and my brother Reggie, girl, was together – that’s what it was, an amazing time being on tour together, being on that road together, what a time,” Mo’Nique said. “So I have no sad tears because all of our times together [were] amazing.”