Person of Interest in Young Dolph Murder Found Shot to Death

A man who was named by police as a person of interest in the 2021 murder of rapper/music exec Young Dolph has been killed. According to Memphis’ ABC 24, family members identified Joshua Taylor as the victim of a fatal shooting in the city on Wednesday afternoon.

At press time it was reported that there was no suspect yet as the investigation is ongoing; a spokesperson for the Memphis Police Dept. had not returned calls requesting additional information on the case at press time. Taylor (who reportedly went by the alias CEO Teezy) was named as a person of interest in the Dolph murder case in February 2022 and according to the repot he was wanted on a number of other charges, including theft of property between $10,000-$60,000 and possession of a prohibited weapon.

Fox 13 reported that Taylor was found shot to death inside a car and that he was thought to have been a friend of Justin Johnson, one of the two alleged shooters who’ve been charged in Dolph’s killing. Police never charged Taylor directly in the killing and he had not been mentioned in the case, though investigators reportedly wanted to find out if Taylor knew where Johnson was on the day of Dolph’s killing or if he knew anything about the murder.

Dolph (born Adolph Robert Thornton Jr.), was gunned down while shopping at Makeda’s Cookies near his boyhood home in Memphis in Nov. 2021. Last week, Jermarcus Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact after officials said he helped two other men during the daytime ambush killing.

Johnson was the first of four defendants to plead guilty or be convicted in Dolph shooting.