Felton Tate, a 44-year-old Black/African American male, was coming home on July 9, 2008, when violence followed him all the way to his own front porch in Alabama. What should have been the simple end of an ordinary day turned into the moment his family would spend years trying to understand. As Tate reached the porch, he was shot multiple times in the chest.
He survived long enough after the shooting to speak to family members.
According to available online reporting, Tate described the person who shot him before he died, giving his loved ones a final and painful clue in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Even with that information, the case did not quickly move into a public arrest or prosecution.
In the years that followed, Felton Tate’s death remained unsolved in the public record. Online sources do not identify a named suspect, and no publicly available reports located for this synopsis describe anyone being arrested, charged, tried, or convicted in connection with his killing. The available information also does not clearly establish a motive, whether the shooting was connected to a dispute, a robbery, a personal conflict, or another circumstance.
The case stands as a cold Alabama shooting in which a man was killed at the place where he should have been safest. Tate’s family was left with the memory of his last words and the description he gave of his killer, but publicly available reporting does not show that those details have yet led to an arrest or courtroom resolution.
