Elite Saudi bodyguards? mercs? troops? gunfight in Memphis

[JasonPratt]

I don't have a story link for this yet (being lazy), but Mom and Dad were tangentially involved in this one! -- it happened in their hotel, a Sheraton, in Memphis while they were attending my cousin Rachel's graduation as a medical doctor last Friday (May 26th). My sister-in-law and her kids were there, too. (Not in the hotel, they had driven down, living closer to start with.)

At some point after the family left the hotel and went across to the convention center or hall or whatever, where the ceremony was being held, two men and a woman (well described on the local WREG news site, except for their ethnicity  ::) ) approached a hotel room on the 7th floor and were given admittance by the occupant, a Saudi man. Whereupon guns were pulled and shot for some reason. The Saudi man was injured; one of the suspects was critically shot. The other two fled when the Saudi man's three companions, in the next room over, arrived as reinforcement. Turns out, the four Saudis were part of an elite military or paramilitary group reportedly in town to vacation briefly (perhaps over Memorial Day weekend) before moving on to an undisclosed training ground in Arkansas for undisclosed purposes.

When the ceremony was over, my parents tried to get back into the hotel to pick up their things and leave to go eat lunch, and found the whole place in lockdown with police naturally swarming the area. The two surviving perps escaped, the woman and one of the men, and as far as Mom has heard (naturally she has been trying to keep track of the story) they haven't been found.

The motive being reported was robbery, but it seems awwwwwfuullllyyyyyy coincidental that three gangers decided to assault rob the only room at a relatively upscale hotel that happened to have a lone armed Saudi ass-kicker -- and that this elite troop or guard or whatever would open the door to three naturally-suspicious looking strangers. (The descriptions given, report them colorfully decked out.)


Anyway. For my parents it was only a hassle, of course. But I haven't seen much of it on the news, so I thought the story might be interesting.  8)

[Atilla60]

Fishy story for sure

Glad to hear your parents are okay Jason

[Sir Slash]

Ditto Jason. Saudis vacationing in Memphis? What, were they heading-out to Graceland? Or after some really good Bar-B-Que? Arkansas I can understand. I been there and it's the perfect place to hide anything secret. Not even the people who live there know where they are. There's more to this story. Whether we'll ever get it is another story.

[JasonPratt]

I think the concept was that they had arrived in the states at Memphis as transit to Arkansas, but their hosts wouldn't be ready for a little while (wherever that was for training in AR), so they were just hanging out for a day or two until then.

Lol'd at the BBQ! I wonder if the Memphis travel board markets that way to the Middle East?

(There's a lot more than pork at the Memphis BBQ festival, not least because Memphis is the center for conservative and orthodox Judaism in the American mid-South, but still...)

[bayonetbrant]

Possible ARK location was Ft Chaffee?

[airboy]

Weird story.  Glad your parents are OK.

[MikeGER]

Possible ARK location was Ft Chaffee?

Possible ARK location was Ft Covfefe     ...fixed that for you ^-^