Teen shot dead on New Year’s Eve in Mobile identified

Teen shot dead on New Year’s Eve in Mobile identified

Mobile police on Wednesday publicly identified the teenager shot dead during New Year’s Eve celebrations.

The victim was identified as 19-year-old Marcus Kennedy, said Mobile police Cpl. Katrina Frazier.

Kennedy was found shot at 12:16 a.m. Monday in the 300 block of Dauphin Street, police said.

He was transported to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The shooting occurred approximately one block away from where a deadly shooting occurred on New Year’s Eve last year. Thomas Earl Thomas Jr., 23, is serving a 10-year prison sentence — the maximum sentence allowed under federal law — for possessing a machine gun that he fired into a crowd of revelers in the 200 block of Dauphin Street. One person was killed and nine others were wounded. The injured ranged from 17 to 57 years old. Thomas faces additional charges in state court.

That shooting sparked chaos through downtown Mobile close to where the annual MoonPie Over Mobile event occurred. There is no indication that Monday’s shooting resulted with similar reactions.

The fatal shooting on Monday happened despite Mobile police announcing they would have stepped up enforcement during this year’s festivities. The department announced last week that it was allocating additional officers, including those on traffic patrol, bike patrol, horse-mounted patrol, foot patrol and undercover officers, to cover the event. Uniformed officers, police say, would “highly visible” throughout the events.