A western Jefferson County man has been convicted in the 2021 murder of a teen killed inside the Comfort Inn hotel in Bessemer.

A Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff jury found 22-year-old Tyriq McCall guilty of murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Orlando Keith Williams Jr.

McCall’s trial began Nov. 18. The jury returned the guilty verdict on Monday.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge David Carpenter presided over the trial. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

McCall was also charged in a 2022 police chase and crash on Interstate 59 that seriously injured a Homewood police officer.

He was wanted at the time on a failure to appear warrant in connection with Williams’ death and was charged with attempting to elude and second-degree receiving stolen property following that chase.

Those newer charges have not yet been adjudicated.

McCall is also facing a civil suit from the Homewood officer injured in the crash.

Williams was shot inside the hotel at 11:03 p.m. Saturday, April 10, 2021. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 11:32 p.m.

Williams’ mother, April Chaney, spoke with AL.com the day after her son’s death.

She said she was heartbroken and believed he was set up to be killed following many months of an ongoing feud in which two other young men were killed and multiple shots fired in the Bessemer area.

“Half these children that were in that room grew up at my mama’s front door. They set my baby up. They played him,’’ Chaney said in that interview.

“I treated them like they were my children, and they stole my baby’s life.’’

Williams was one of several people wounded in October 2020 when his friend, 18-year-old Mikel Cooper, a senior at Bessemer City High School, was fatally shot.

That shooting happened at 5:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26, at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 15th Street North in Bessemer.

Cooper died on the scene and three other teens, including the 16-year-old suspect, were wounded in the exchange of gunfire. Williams was shot as well as a 13-year-old.

The deadly shooting was followed by at least five other shootings that police believe are in retaliation for the killing of Cooper.

One person – a grandmother – was injured in one of those shootings. They happened both in Bessemer and Brighton.

Chaney said her son went the Comfort Inn to gamble. “They knew he loved to gamble. That was his weakness,’’ she said. “I said, ‘Why are you hanging with them? They don’t mean you no good.’ He said, ‘Mama, I’m not going to let them kill me.’’’

Chaney said she called her son shortly before 11 p.m. “I could hear scuffling and then the phone went out,’’ she said. “I called back, and he didn’t answer. Then my sister called me and said, ‘Get to the Comfort Inn. Your son has been shot.’”

Three other people were charged in Williams’ slaying. Charges against one of the suspects was dismissed, court records show.

The other two suspects were 16 at the time, so efforts to determine the outcome of their cases were unsuccessful.