After nearly two months of debate, an Ensley gas station where three homicides have taken place will remain open, the Birmingham City Council decided Tuesday. Antonio Jerrell Taylor was fatally shot at the Shell at 800 Third Ave. W. on June 10. Taylor was the third person to be killed there since 2015, leading the council to consider revoking its business license.
Six homicides happened in Birmingham during the first week of September, putting the city firmly on track for its most violent year in more than two decades and pressuring city leaders to improve their strategies for responding to such incidents and to focus on preventing them. The first homicide of the month was the highly publicized death of 16-year-old Woodlawn High School student Will Edwards, who was killed in his North East Lake home just after midnight Sept. 1. The following evening, seven teenagers were shot during a gunfight at the downtown music venue WorkPlay, though none were killed. Mayor Randall Woodfin described the weekend’s incidents of youth violence as a “devastating blow to our community.” By the end of the first week, five more homicides had been reported by the Birmingham Police Department, four of which happened within a 24-hour period. Fifty-year-old Antonio Pettaway was stabbed to death in his North Birmingham home Sept. 1 and his girlfriend was taken into custody. The remaining four homicides all took place Sept. 5: 26-year-old Briana Young was shot to death while driving in South Pratt; an unidentified male was found shot to death behind the wheel of a car in Roosevelt; 24-year-old Tarrell Antone Watson was also found dead behind the wheel of a car in North Pratt, ruled a homicide by police; and 30-year-old Preston Lemar Robinson was found shot to death in Green Acres. Just minutes after the week ended, the city already had logged its first homicide of week two. Marqueze Green, 21, died at UAB Hospital after being shot while sitting in a car on Steiner Court S.W. Another victim also was shot but is expected to recover. It wasn’t the most homicides that have taken place in a single week this year — that would be an eight-homicide stretch between July 29 and August 4 — but it has placed Birmingham firmly on track to have its deadliest year in recent memory. Read more.
