17-year-old boy found shot to death on east Birmingham street
A 17-year-old boy was found shot dead on an east Birmingham street.
The city’s East Precinct officers were dispatched at 9:11 p.m. Saturday to a report of a person down in the 400 block of Cheri Lane, just off Red Mill Road in the Roebuck area.
They arrived to find the teen unresponsive in the roadway and determined he had been shot.
The victim was pronounced dead on the scene by Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service.
Officer Truman Fitzgerald said there were shell casings near the victim, so investigators believe he was shot where he was found dead.
Fitzgerald said it’s too soon to know if the victim of the deadly shooting was targeted.
The victim lived not far from where he was killed, and multiple family members rushed to the scene.
The teen’s mother was among those standing just outside the yellow crime scene waiting for answers.
Police then brought the boy’s mother to meet with the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, which notified her of son’s death.
“She got sick to her stomach, she fell to the ground, and those images are the ones the public needs to hear about, the families that are here suffering, laying in the roadway, just collapsing from news that they lost their loved one,’’ Fitzgerald said.
“You never get used to seeing the family’s reactions,’’ he said. “Tonight, to sit there and watch the Jefferson County coroner ask just simple questions to the mother and she just froze.”
“It’s almost as if she knew that was going to be her baby,’’ Fitzgerald said, “and there’s no way to really verbalize what it’s like to watch a mom when she just heard her 17-year-old baby was taken from her.”
No arrests have been made.
Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.