Quavion Blair, a 20-year-old man from Birmingham, Alabama, was killed in the early hours of May 16, 2020, inside the Firehouse Shelter on 2nd Avenue North, a place meant to be a stopgap against the streets. Police were called to the shelter around 3:00 a.m., and when officers rushed in they found him in the lobby area, unresponsive, with multiple lacerations and puncture wounds consistent with a stabbing. Birmingham Fire and Rescue and the Jefferson County Coroner responded, but there was nothing left to do; he was pronounced dead at the scene.
As the first hours unfolded, investigators focused on what authorities described as a conflict inside the shelter itself. The preliminary account released publicly indicated Blair had been stabbed multiple times by another resident following an argument or altercation, turning an indoor dispute into a fatal eruption before dawn. While the shelter’s lobby became a crime scene, police tracked down a suspect away from the building, turning the case quickly from an unidentified assailant to a named target.
The suspect identified by police was Eugene Antonio Pettaway, 31. Reports stated he was taken into custody at a bus-station hub in Birmingham—described variously as the MAX bus station, the Greyhound station, or the Birmingham Intermodal Facility—and he was transported to a hospital for treatment of injuries before being moved into the jail system. Authorities obtained a murder warrant, and reporting on the booking indicated Pettaway was ultimately placed in the Jefferson County Jail with bond set at $250,000 on the murder charge.
