Manquel Mertez Whittsett was 38, a Black man, when his life was cut short in the early hours of June 5, 2013, outside the Stonegate Apartment Complex off Lakeshore Parkway in Birmingham, Alabama. Just before 1:00 a.m., police were called to the area, where he was found wounded by gunfire near a black 2004 BMW 545I on Leaf Lake Boulevard.
People living nearby later told investigators they heard multiple gunshots in quick succession.
In the moments after the sound faded, Whittsett was discovered in and around his car, bleeding from a gunshot wound. The scene, lit by scattered apartment lights and the glare of emergency strobes, quickly turned from confusion to urgency as first responders worked to keep him alive.
He was rushed to UAB Hospital, but the wounds were catastrophic. Authorities reported that he had been shot in the stomach, and he died shortly after arriving at the hospital. The killing was immediately treated as a homicide, and Birmingham police began trying to piece together what had happened outside the apartment complex in those last minutes of his life.
In the days and months that followed, the case lingered with more questions than answers. Investigators publicly acknowledged how little they could share, urging anyone who saw a person approach the car, heard an argument, noticed a vehicle fleeing, or recognized anything unusual in the minutes around the shooting to come forward—promising anonymity through tip lines.
Despite those appeals, no suspect was publicly named in the reporting available, and the case was still being described as unsolved in later follow-ups. Authorities stated that no arrests had been made, leaving Whittsett’s death suspended in that narrow stretch of time between the burst of gunfire and the quiet after, when a man was found gravely injured beside his car and the trail went cold.
