A new report from The Washington Post reveals a pattern of police not talking to witnesses, not following up on investigations and not properly conducting interviews when handling several investigations surrounding Grizzlies star Ja Morant.
In one specific incident, a shoe salesman says police never followed up with him when he filed a report that Morant and eight or nine other men threatened him at his job, forcing him to hide in the back of the store.
Givon Busby, 22, told the Post he spent nearly an hour in the storeroom, at times “shaking” with emotion. The college student is a shoe salesman at Finish Line in the Wolfchase Galleria mall in Memphis where he recalled an incident that happened on July 22, 2022.
On that busy day in the store, Busby said a customer became angry he had helped two white women before her. Busby, who is Black, said he didn’t mean to disrespect anyone. She became angrier when he informed her they didn’t have the shoe she wanted—the Nike VaporMax 2021 in orange-and-cheetah print—in her size.
The woman began following him around and yelling at him and said she’d call her son. This led to his managers sending Busby to the back of the store, fearing for his safety. The woman was Jamie Morant, Ja’s mother. According to the Post, the newspaper contacted her via the phone, but she hung up when the reporter identified themselves. Busby stands at 5'3", making him nearly a foot shorter than the 6'2" Ja Morant who showed up to the store with nine other men, Busby said.
Morant proceeded to the part of the store where customers weren’t allowed, and he looked through the window of the stockroom.
“Where’s the short guy with the dreads?” Morant kept shouting, according to Busby. “I’m gonna wait until you get off work.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, he’s really trying to get me,” Busby said. “Like, he’s trying to hurt me.’”
He eventually slipped out of the mall when his managers said he had to leave and said he was scared to walk out to his car. Four days later, he filed a police report, but the police never followed up with him. The report obtained by the Post lists the potential offense as “intimidation.” It lists Morant’s mother as “Suspect #1 Unknown,” despite her identity being an easy find.
The officer did not refer to Ja Morant as a suspect in the report, which helped shield the report from the public. Police told the Post it had no reports listing Ja Morant as a suspect.
In a March 2023 interview with ESPN’s Jalen Rose, the Memphis guard said all of the recent incidents he has been involved in occurred because he was trying to protect his family, including the incident at the mall.
“I went to make sure my mom was safe,” Morant said. “Once I realized that, you know, I left the scene again.”
The Post article also reported a similar pattern in police investigations surrounding an incident where a 17-year-old boy said Morant and his friends attacked him, prompting Morant to flash his gun. The same was found in an incident where Morant, his family and friends stormed into a high school volleyball game after his sister got in a verbal spat with another student. The full details of these incidents can be read here.
