(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Memphis is mourning the shooting death of a civic leader. Authorities say Philip Trenary, the president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, was fatally shot on a downtown street at about 8 p.m. Thursday.
Police said Trenary was pronounced dead at Regional One Health hospital. They appealed for help locating a suspect described as a black male with dreadlocks, wearing a blue shirt and driving a white four-door Ford F150.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland called it a “senseless loss.” Gov. Bill Haslam tweeted that “our hearts are broken with the news.”
Trenary was a former airline executive lauded for his community work in his adopted city.
He founded Lone Star Airlines in Oklahoma in 1984 and came to Memphis in 1997 to run a regional airline that morphed into Pinnacle, a $1 billion, 7,700-employee regional airline operator.
