A barrage of gunfire in a Birmingham public housing community early Monday left 19-year-old man dead, and another person injured.
Roughly 70 rounds were unleashed just before 1 a.m. in Rev. Dr Morrell Todd Homes in the city’s Kingston community, the second time in less than a week that a barrage of gunfire in the neighborhood has left someone dead.
The man killed was identified as Dementrius Orlando Collins by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office.
South Precinct officers were alerted at 12:50 a.m. that the city’s gunfire detection system – Shot Spotter – had registered numerous shots fired in the 4600 block of Roscoe Avenue. Dispatchers then notified officers that someone had been hit.
Once at the complex, police found an adult male unresponsive in the front yard of an apartment building.
Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service worked on Collins and loaded him in the rescue unit to transport but were unable to save him. Collins was pronounced dead on the scene.
While police were in Kingston, they learned a second vehicle had stopped on Interstate 59/20 near the Tallapoosa Street exit with a gunshot victim inside.
Officer Truman Fitzgerald said investigators determined that victim had been shot in Kingston and was trying to get to the hospital before the driver stopped to call for help. Those injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
He said he didn’t yet know how many guns were fired.
“We’re still determining who was a target, if they were a target at all,’’ he said. “However, we had a bunch of rounds fired and right now we’re in the early stages.”
One week ago, a gunfight in Kingston during which 90 rounds were fired left one man dead, and another jailed. That shooting happened during the evening hours of Memorial Day and was captured on surveillance cameras.
One woman at this morning’s scene said, “We’re sick of this,” as she walked pass police and news reporters.
“For one, you have an issue with guns being in the wrong hands,’’ Fitzgerald said. “Two, we need Kingston residents to help us out, get those who don’t belong in the neighborhood out of here.”
“Any patrol officer who has worked in a housing community will tell you nine times out of 10, the people who live in the housing community are amazing people,’’ he said. “It’s normally people who are outside of the housing community that cause the issues.”
“We have a group of individuals that are bringing their drama, their trouble here and terrorizing the residents because of that,’’ Fitzgerald said. “When you see activity that is suspicious give us a call because as you have seen, you have beefs coming into the Kingston Community that never originated here.”
Fitzgerald said there is no obvious link to the two recent, deadly shootings in Kingston.
“However, here lately you can’t rule out either of the shootings being connected to one another,’’ he said.
Collins is Birmingham’s 57th homicide this year. Of those, one was an officer-involved shooting by an outside law enforcement agency and four others have been ruled justifiable and therefore aren’t deemed criminal.
In all of Jefferson County, there have been 80 homicides including the 57 in Birmingham.
Anyone with information is asked to call homicide investigators at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
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