Birmingham’s 6th shooting of the weekend leaves 1 dead in apartment parking lot

Birmingham’s 6th shooting of the weekend leaves 1 dead in apartment parking lot

An argument in the parking lot of an east Birmingham apartment building left one man dead.

The shooting was one of six in the city in roughly 24 hours, but the first to end in death.

East Precinct officers were dispatched at 10:45 p.m. Saturday to the apartments at 420 78th Street South. Once at the location, they found the victim – an adult male – unresponsive on the ground.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced the man dead on the scene. His identity has not yet been released.

Officer Truman Fitzgerald said it appears the was a verbal argument and the unidentified suspect fled on foot. No arrests have been made.

“We don’t believe this incident is random,’’ he said.

There have been six people shot in Birmingham since Friday night, when two people were wounded – one of them critically – during a dice game.

On Saturday, there was an exchange of gunfire that left two people with non-life-threatening injuries. That shooting happened at Montevallo Gardens apartments in southwest Birmingham.

Then, about 5:15 p.m. Saturday, a man was ambushed and critically injured when a group of people opened fire on him while he was walking on Avenue L in Ensley.

The east side shooting was the city’s first fatal of the six weekend shootings so far.

Last weekend, two people were killed and nine others injured between Friday and Saturday.

Saturday night’s homicide marks the city’s 52nd slaying so far this year. Of those, one was an officer-involved shooting by an outside agency and at least two others have been ruled justifiable.

In all of Jefferson County, there have been 65 homicide this year including the 52 in Birmingham, and also including a 15-year-old girl who was shot to death in Fairfield earlier Saturday.

Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.