A missing Alabama woman’s body was found burning at the end of a wooded, dead-end road after she reportedly vanished while making a Facebook Marketplace purchase.
The woman, identified as Jermiera Ivory Fowler, 31, had not been seen since Wednesday, the Birmingham Police Department said in a release.
Police were called to Sellers Road around 9 p.m. Thursday to a report of a burning body.
Birmingham Fire Rescue personnel put out the flames, and officers noticed “visible signs of trauma” on the victim, according to the release.
After she was pronounced dead, officials discovered she had been shot before being set on fire.
Herbert Brown, who lives on Tucker Avenue — the street directly behind Sellers Road — told WVTM he woke up Thursday night to flames springing up right behind his backyard fence.
“When I looked out my bedroom window, I seen a big flame,” Brown told the outlet. “I mean a big flame.”
“So I was curious like is somebody burning trash, so I go out there with a big flashlight and I look over the fence and there was this body on fire. The firefighters came, they put the fire out and the police stayed out there until 2 or 3 in the morning just scanning the place,” he said.
Charred leaves were all that remained Friday, the day after Brown alerted authorities to the disturbing discovery.
“I seen this picture and it went through my mind, that’s that lady out here that’s burning,” Brown said. “This shouldn’t have happened to her like that.”
Brown, who has lived on Tucker Avenue for 15 years, said he believes whoever did this knew what they were doing.
“That’s a dead end and you’d have to know this area to want to cut off onto that street and go down through there because it’s a church down that dead end, no traffic be down there,” Brown said.
Fowler’s vehicle was found in a separate location.
It’s unclear whether she had made the Facebook Marketplace purchase before her death, and police could not say whether her death stemmed from the online purchase meet-up.
No arrest has been made in connection to Fowler’s murder.
Police are investigating the case as a homicide.
