Drive-by shooting in west Birmingham neighborhood leaves man dead, woman wounded

Drive-by shooting in west Birmingham neighborhood leaves man dead, woman wounded

A drive-by shooting in west Birmingham Wednesday left one person dead and another injured.

The gunfire rang out about 10:40 a.m. in front of a house in the 400 block of Fifth Street in Pratt City.

Officer Truman Fitzgerald said West Precinct officers arrived to find the male victim unresponsive in the road. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

The woman was on the sidewalk. She was awake and alert, but shot.

She was taken to UAB Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Fitzgerald said the victims standing outside a home when an unknown suspect pulled up and fired multiple shots. Police marked numerous shells casings in the street surrounding the house.

The shooter fled the scene. No one is in custody.

“This street is relatively uiet and mostly elderly people live on this street,’’ Fitzgerald said. “When you have someone that’s willing to come and fire that many rounds on a populated residental street, we have seen so many incidents when innocent people have been struck by gunfire.”

“We’re hoping to depend on the closeness of the Pratt City neighborhood to solve this homicide because we know it’s tight-knit, it’s close and word travels fast,’’ he said.

Fitzgerald said today’s homicide is a good example where a program announced last week by Police Chief Scott Thurmond and Mayor Randall Woodfin could help bring swift justice in a violent crime.

Through Connect Birmingham, residents and business owners with surveillance systems are being asked to allow the city’s Real Time Crime Center access to their footage.

“Here you have a shooting that took place in broad daylight on a heavily resident street,’’ Fitzgerald said. “Let’s just say a few of the houses (on Fifth Street), those cameras would allow our detectives to view footage of the shooting, of the suspects, what they left in, and and it would provide the even more resources so we could combat homicides fasters.”

The slain victim is Birmingham’s 117th confirmed homicide this year. Of those, one was an officer-involved shooting by an outside law enforcement agency, and eight others have been ruled justifiable.

In all of Jefferson County there have been 163 homicides, including the 117 in Birmingham.

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