India Zippora Collins, a 26-year-old Black woman, died on March 26, 2021, in Tarrant, Alabama, in a case investigators described as an apparent murder-suicide inside a home on Hatchett Avenue. Two people were found dead from gunshot wounds at the scene, and authorities identified DeAngelo Carter as the other person who died.
The night before the bodies were discovered, police said Carter called his mother around midnight and told her he “messed up,” a statement that helped set the tragedy in motion. Family members’ concern led officers to check the residence, but the first attempt to make contact didn’t provide enough legal basis to force entry. By the time the home was entered and the dead were found, the violence had already ended.
Investigators believed Collins was shot in the head. Inside the home, her two young daughters—reported to be six and two years old—were believed to have been present and to have witnessed parts of what happened. Police believed the children were moved into a bedroom before Carter ultimately turned the gun on himself.
Because the suspected shooter was found dead at the scene, the case did not unfold through the usual chain of arrests, court filings, and trial dates. There was no later suspect search to track across months, no arraignment, and no prosecution—only the grim conclusion investigators drew from the scene itself: a fatal shooting followed by suicide. In the aftermath, what remained were the details pieced together by investigators and the stark fact that two children survived a night in the same home where their mother’s life ended.
