Personal Injury Law

Nashville Security Guard Charged with Murder

A Nashville, Tennessee grand jury has issued a second-degree murder indictment against security guard Jeremy Holmes in the death of Adam Villegas. This unfortunate case began when Holmes got into an argument outside the Marathon Sports Bar in Nipper's Corner. Holmes, who was working security in the parking lot at the time.

This case emphasis the drastic need for more stringent training requirements to become an armed security guard in Tennessee. Currently, Tennessee only requires an additional 8 hours of training to become an certified armed security guard. Once this limited training is completed the officer can be placed in the most dangerous of situations and given the duty to protect us. This is both unfair to the security guard and the public. To give someone the ability and to use deadly force with such limited instructions is asking for tragedy. My office has handled to many cases where unnecessary force was used by a security guard and the results where devastating.
We can only hope that some good can come from tragic cases like the one involving the death of Villegas. Hopefully, security companies will provide more training, be more selective on their hiring and our legislature will increase the minimum training requirements.

Full post as published by Tennessee Law Blog on September 12, 2008 (boomark / email).