Families mourn St. Clair County victims in 4 linked homicides: ‘It’s senseless’
Friends and family and mourning the overnight shooting deaths of a man and woman at a St. Clair County home.
Amber L. Manning, 37, and Timothy R. Davidson, 62, were among four people killed in two separate shootings that authorities say were carried out by Daniel P. Watson, 28, of Pell City.
The other two slayings – also a man and a woman – took place inside a home in Birmingham’s South East Lake community. Authorities have not yet released their identities.
Davidson was retired and the father of an adult daughter. Manning was a wife, and a mother as well.
Davidson lived with Manning and her family in the Ragland home where the deadly shootings took place. Family said they had been longtime friends.
Davidson’s sister, Cathy Riggs, said the family is shocked by the killings.
“I can’t imagine why anybody would walk in and shoot him in the back of the head,’’ Riggs told AL.com. “I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She described her brother as good-natured.
“It’s senseless,’’ Riggs said. “Tim was the kind of person who would give the shirt off his back.”
Manning leaves behind her husband and three sons. Friends described her as an ‘’amazing” mother.
“It’s a shock and I hate it,’’ said retired St. Clair County Commissioner Paul Manning, the victim’s uncle by marriage. “It’s bad. We’ve got too much of this going on in our country. Something’s got to be done.”
St. Clair County Sheriff Billy Murray said investigators are still trying to sort out details.
“We’re still actively investigating to try to piece everything together,’’ Murray said. “It’s a terrible situation.”
Murray said at about 12:01 a.m., St. Clair County Deputies responded to a disturbance call at 1 Ivy Drive Ragland.
When they arrived, the deputies found Manning dead in the driveway.
Davidson was inside the residence and still alive. He was flown by lifesaver to UAB hospital and later pronounced dead.
Birmingham police spokesman Officer Truman Fitzgerald said officers at 6 a.m. Tuesday received information from the Leeds Police Department that Watson had confessed to shooting two people in Birmingham.
Watson was able to provide general information about a house in South East Lake where two of the killings took place.
Officers made entry and found the victims dead from gunshot wounds.
Fitzgerald said Watson approached a Leeds police officer at about 5 a.m. and told him that he had shot two people in Birmingham, and two people in St. Clair County.
Fitzgerald said he believes the Birmingham killings happened first, likely between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.
Watson remains held without bond in the St. Clair County Jail.
He shares the same last name as the owners and/or residents of the South East Lake home, property records show, but any relationship between Watson and any of the victims has not yet been disclosed.