Police say Birmingham breaking its 91-year-old homicide record in 2024 was fueled, in part, by the alleged two-month crime spree of Damien Laron McDaniel III, a 22-year-old multiple mass murder suspect charged with killing 11 people and wounding 29 others.

In all, Birmingham ended 2024 with 151 homicides, the highest number of killings in the city since 1933.

If guilty of those 11 homicides, McDaniel is to blame for 7.3% of all of Birmingham’s 2024 murders.

Without the lives lost by his alleged actions, Birmingham would have ended the year with 139 homicides.

That would have still been more than the 2023 total of 135 but fewer than its 2022 homicide total of 144, which surpassed that of the deadliest year in recent city history, 1991.

Birmingham police spokesman Officer Truman Fitzgerald said the violence in 2024 can’t be discussed “without mentioning the crime spree we witnessed from July through September.”

That spree included two mass shootings, one in July at Trendsetters lounge in north Birmingham and the other at Hush lounge on the city’s Southside.

McDaniel’s family and his attorneys have declined to comment on the accusations against him.

Court records, police statements and his own words paint a bleak picture of how McDaniel, the son of a convicted drug trafficker and accused killer, came to face the possibility of execution or life in prison if convicted in a string of murders that would make him one of the most prolific killers in Alabama history.

‘He would have not stopped’

McDaniel is accused in two of the three quadruple homicides that shocked the city in 2024.

Angela Weatherspoon, 56, of Center Point, Markeisha Gettings, 42, of Birmingham, Stevie McGhee, 39, of Birmingham, and Lerandus Anderson, 24, of Center Point, were killed at a shooting at a birthday party at a nightclub on July 13.

On Sept. 21, four people were killed and 17 injured in a mass shooting outside the Hush hookah lounge in Five Points South. Those killed were Carlos McCain, 27, Roderick Lynn Patterson Jr., 26, Anitra Holloman, 21, and Tahj Booker, 27.

A second suspect is charged alongside McDaniel in the Trendsetters mass shooting, and four others in the robbery/killing of another man, but McDaniel is the only suspect so far charged in the Hush massacre.

McDaniel is also charged in the Sept. 19 killing of Diontrante Tinae Brown, a 35-year-old mother who police say was an innocent bystander shot to death inside 604 Bar and Lounge on Ninth Street North.

He is also charged in the Sept. 22 robbery shooting death of 32-year-old Jamarcus McIntyre, who died in a hail of gunfire in the 700 block of 81st Place South less than 24 hours after the Five Points South shooting.

McIntyre’s killing was caught on chilling home surveillance video and showed gunmen shooting McIntyre and stealing his backpack. Four others have also been charged in McIntyre’s slaying.

He is also suspected in other unsolved homicides, police confirmed.

“When we announced his arrest for additional homicides aside from the Hush shooting, we announced that in working with the Jefferson County District’s Office and going over the impact that Damien McDaniel as well as the other suspects had in our community, they were responsible for up to 30 percent of all homicides from July to September,” Fitzgerald said.

“The community played a major role in removing Damien McDaniel from our streets, and anytime you have an individual responsible for at least 11 homicides, the community stepping up and helping us remove him from the streets has saved lives and will save lives moving into 2025,’’ Fitzgerald said.

“There is no question that he would have not stopped harming our community members if he was still on the street.”

Investigators have previously said some of the killings in which McDaniel is charged were likely “hits.”

Who paid for the killings and why have not have been revealed.

Who is Damien McDaniel?

What little is publicly known about McDaniel’s past comes from court records, news reports and a short interview he gave in a YouTube documentary about Birmingham violence.

McDaniel, then 17, was arrested at Fairfield High School for an October 2019 case in which two people were shot at in Fairfield.

He pleaded guilty on April 26, 2023, to two counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with two years to serve followed by three years of probation.

The week before Birmingham police announced McDaniel’s arrest in the Hush massacre, Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff Chief Assistant District Attorney Lane Tolbert filed a motion to revoke McDaniel’s probation in the 2019 attempted murder cases.

McDaniel, prosecutors contended, violated his probation terms by engaging in “injurious and vicious” habits. He was recorded on social media brandishing firearms at least nine times between April 1, 2024, through Oct. 1.

His probation was revoked on Dec. 12.

There has been criticism about the sentence and probation on the Fairfield cases – which put McDaniel back on the streets.

Tolbert said they were fortunate to obtain a conviction by way of McDaniel’s guilty plea — and the 15 year split sentence of time served awaiting trial and probation.

Prosecutors, he said, had “no one” who was willing to come forward with information.

“When you have no witness cooperation, like in most of his cases, because of fear probably, we were lucky to get that,’’ Tolbert said.

“He wasn’t ‘released early,’’’ Tolbert said. “He got what he got because no one was willing to cooperate.”

McDaniel had at least a half-dozen arrests as a juvenile which were either dismissed or ended with him being given probation. Those charges ranged from being a juvenile in possession of a gun to giving false information to police.

In 2021, he was arrested by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office on an attempted murder charge, but he would later tell investigators the grand jury did not indict him.

He was also arrested by Vestavia Hills police on charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and meth. The disposition of those charges was not available.

McDaniel is the father of two children who were last known to live Georgia. He described his relationship with his children to investigators as “poor.”

McDaniel’s own father, 43-year-old Damien Laron McDaniel Jr., is in federal prison in Kentucky. He was sentenced to 26 years in 2013 for trafficking cocaine and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

His father’s arrest in that case came after a six hour standoff with U.S. Marshals in Adamsville. The older McDaniel was described in news reports as a former leader of the Bloods gang in the Fairfield area.

When McDaniel III was a boy, about 5 or 6, his father was charged with the fatal 2007 shooting death of 23-year-old Cedric Burch in Fairfield two months after McDaniel Jr. and others allegedly poured gasoline on Burch and set him on fire.

At the time of that homicide, McDaniel Jr. was out on bond for shooting Burch’s brother and had already served at least part of a 10 year sentence for possessing cocaine.

The case was nol prossed, and Damien McDaniel Jr. never went to trial for the slaying.

His son was a few months shy of his 12th birthday when McDaniel Jr. received the 26 year sentence. Damien McDaniel Jr. is scheduled to be released in 2037, according to the federal prison system.

‘They ain’t going to spare me.’

The younger McDaniel previously worked at a Walmart, but that job ended with his 2019 cases.

He attended Fairfield High Preparatory School until his junior year, leaving in 2019 when he was arrested. During his time in high school, he had been suspended for fighting.

McDaniel told investigators in 2023 that he was prescribed psychotropic medications for various mental health issues, however he stopped taking them during his time in jail. He also reported having therapy a couple of times a week.

McDaniel, prior to his arrest in the Hush shootings, was interviewed in a YouTube documentary about violence and murder in Alabama called ‘This City Eats People Alive: The Most Dangerous Place in Alabama, America: The Dirty South posted by The Taboo Room With Aaron S.

Ny’Quan Cordae Lollar, 22, another suspect in McIntyre’s death, was also featured in the documentary.

They were asked if they would have any empathy toward the mothers of someone who was murdered.

“I’m (expletive) going to do the same thing to you so why not do it to them?” McDaniel said. “Why show them compassion when they ain’t gonna show your folks compassion?”

“They ain’t sparing (expletive),” Lollar says.

“They ain’t going to spare me,’’ McDaniel said. “If their son ends up dead and they come to court, they ain’t going to spare me in the mother (expletive) courtroom. They’re going to want my ass (inaudible).”