Anthony David Decola, a 33-year-old man, was killed on April 23, 2021, in Homewood, Alabama, when what began as an argument at a roadside motel turned deadly. In the middle of the day, police were sent to the Motel 6 on Vulcan Road after a report that someone had been shot. The scene was chaotic and fast-moving, the kind of sudden violence that leaves people scrambling to understand what they just witnessed.
Officers arrived to find Decola suffering from a gunshot wound near the upper
floors of the building, outside the door of a room. While first responders worked the scene, attention shifted almost immediately to a man seen running from the area. A citizen flagged down responding officers and pointed them toward the fleeing figure, and a brief foot chase followed through the motel’s surroundings. The man, Devonta Jamal Ephraim of Birmingham, was caught close by and taken into custody that afternoon.
Investigators later described the shooting as the result of an argument between Decola and Ephraim, an encounter that escalated from words into gunfire within moments. Detectives obtained warrants accusing Ephraim of murder, and he also faced a charge for being a person forbidden to possess a firearm. He was held in the Jefferson County Jail without bond as the case moved forward, shifting from a frantic crime-scene response into months of court filings, hearings, and preparation for trial.
By 2023, the case reached a jury, and the outcome fell short of the original accusation but still carried the weight of a homicide conviction. Ephraim was found guilty on a reduced charge of manslaughter rather than murder. A judge later imposed a 30-year sentence in state prison, bringing a formal end to the courtroom fight over what happened in that motel corridor, even as the consequences of that afternoon remained permanent for Decola’s loved ones.
