Joe Albert Foster IV, a 21-year-old Black man from Birmingham, Alabama, was killed in a shooting that unfolded just after midnight at the Villas at Westridge apartment complex on Court R, in the Ensley area of the city. The call came in around 12:21 a.m. on Tuesday, July 28, 2020—an overnight moment that sat on the edge of July 27 and July 28—when residents reported the sharp crack of gunfire in the complex.
When Birmingham police officers arrived, they began checking the area and were told the shots seemed to have come from a nearby apartment. Peering through a window, officers spotted someone lying motionless on the floor inside. After gaining entry, they found Foster unresponsive, suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators treated it as a homicide from the start, working the apartment complex in the early hours—tracking down witnesses, looking for surveillance footage, and trying to reconstruct what happened in the moments before the gunfire.
As the case moved forward, detectives identified a suspect and took their findings to the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office for review. That process led to a murder warrant, and on August 21, 2020, police announced an arrest: Myles Cordell Amerson of Birmingham was taken into custody and charged with murder in connection with Foster's death. Reports at the time said Amerson was being held in the Jefferson County Jail on a $60,000 bond.
