Clay Beathard Stabbing: Police Charge Suspect Michael Mosley

The Metro Nashville Police Department has issued arrest warrants for Michael Mosley, the man suspected of stabbing Clay Beathard and two other people outside of a Nashville bar on Saturday morning (Dec. 21). Mosley, 23, has a prior criminal record and will be charged with two counts of criminal homicide and one count of attempted criminal homicide when he is apprehended.

Police have been searching for Mosley since early Saturday morning, after an altercation inside The Dogwood, located at 1907 Division St. in Nashville, turned physical and resulted in the deaths of 22-year-old Beathard -- the brother of country singer Tucker Beathard and son of songwriter Casey Beathard -- and his friend, 21-year-old Paul Trapeni III. A third victim, now identified by WSMV as 21-year-old AJ Bethurum, another friend and high school classmate of Beathard and Trapeni, sustained injuries to his arm and his eye.

Police originally reported that the fatal encounter began over a woman. They now say that Mosley made an unwelcome advance toward that woman, who was a friend of the three victims, who stepped in to stop him. A verbal dispute inside The Dogwood led to a physical fight outside of the bar, during which Mosley, armed with a sharp object, stabbed Beathard, Trapeni and Bethurum.

Mosley is one of four people, all pictured in surveillance footage, whom police were seeking to question about the incident. One of the men and the woman in the footage have been located and interviewed, but both Mosley and another man have yet to be found and questioned.

“If he’s watching, he needs to turn himself in," says MNPD Commander Kay Lokey. "This has impacted this community greatly and let’s bring this to a peaceful ending. Let justice play its part."

Mosley, police say, should be considered armed and dangerous. When he stabbed Beathard and his two friends, Mosley was out of jail on a $5,000 bond after attacking a 37-year-old woman at the Walmart on Charlotte Pike in West Nashville in December of 2018, which resulted in a felony aggravated assault charge. However, in October of that year, he was also charged with a domestic assault with bodily injury misdemeanor after a separate incident at a home in the 8000 block of Charlotte Pike.

Previously, Mosley was charged with felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon following a 2015 stabbing. In March of 2016, he was convicted of a misdemeanor crime and earned a six-month jail sentence for squirting urine on a Davidson County jail employee on Christmas in 2015. Most recently, Mosley was one of six people charged with instigating a riot at a Cheatham County jail in March of this year.

Anyone with information about Mosley's whereabouts should contact Nashville Metro Police at 615-862-8600 or 615-742-7463.

Clay Beathard is one of five children born to country music songwriter Casey Beathard and his wife Susan. In addition to his singer brother, Clay Beathard's siblings are San Francisco 49ers quarterback CJ Beathard and sisters Charly and Tatum. His grandfather, Bobby Beathard, is a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee and former NFL general manager.

Clay Beathard graduated from Battle Ground Academy in 2017, and was playing college football at Long Island University after transferring from Iowa Western Community College, his LIU Athletics profile reports. He was a junior majoring in sports management.

"Clay was an amazing, big and soft hearted human being with an undeniable love for the Lord," reads a statement from the Beathards. "Nobody's light shined like his when he smiled. That is what we will hold in our hearts because we know he is smiling now."

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