Fredrick Adams, a 32-year-old man, was killed in Birmingham, Alabama, in the early hours of December 27, 2019, after what began as an ordinary sound at the wrong time: a knock at the back door. Just after 1 a.m., police were called to an apartment on 24th Street South in the Southtown area. Inside, officers found him in the kitchen, unresponsive from a gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
In the first hours, there was little to explain why the night turned violent.
Investigators said Adams had gone to the back door after hearing the knock, and moments later he was shot—an attack that felt sudden and intimate, as if the person outside knew exactly how to get him to open up. At that point, police said they had no motive and no suspects they could name publicly.
As daylight came, the loss rippled outward into a family left trying to make sense of something senseless. Local reporting described a grieving mother speaking through shock and anger, holding onto the hope that someone—anyone—had seen enough or heard enough to finally say what happened at that door.
Weeks later, the case took a dramatic turn. On January 16, 2020, a tip led officers to an apartment complex at 2808 Wallace Covington Circle, near Wenonah High School, where a man wanted in connection with the killing was believed to be inside. Police tried to get him to surrender, but he refused. Negotiators and SWAT stayed on scene for more than an hour, and when the standoff wouldn’t break, officers deployed a gas agent into the apartment. The suspect then came out and was taken into custody without injuries reported to officers or the suspect.
Authorities identified the person arrested as Dewayne Johnson, and reporting at the time stated he was charged with capital murder in Adams’s death. A public incident entry compiling the case also lists Johnson as the suspect and notes his arrest following the December 27 homicide.
Later summaries of Birmingham homicides reported that Johnson was indicted on the capital-murder charge in November 2020, though those summaries did not provide courtroom details beyond that step in the process. Public reporting located here does not clearly document a trial outcome or conviction in the case.
