Christopher Bighames, a 57-year-old Black / African American male from Birmingham, Alabama, was found dead inside his apartment on the afternoon of April 6, 2022, after suffering a gunshot wound. Police and Birmingham Fire and Rescue were called to the 900 block of 52nd Place North in the city’s Woodlawn area at about 4:40 p.m., responding to a report of a person down. When first responders reached him, they tried to render aid, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Early accounts from investigators described a quiet, worrying buildup before the discovery: acquaintances and neighbors had grown concerned and ultimately found him inside the apartment. The location was identified in reporting as the Glenwood Apartments area on 52nd Place North, and detectives began working the case from the start as a shooting death requiring close scrutiny, even as public-facing descriptions shifted between a homicide investigation and a death investigation while the facts were being pinned down.
In the days immediately after Bighames was killed, authorities said there was no clear motive and no one had been taken into custody. Investigators asked anyone with information to contact Birmingham Police detectives, and they also pointed tipsters to Crime Stoppers. Public summaries of Birmingham homicides for 2022 continued to list Bighames’s case as one with no arrest reported, reflecting that no suspect or suspects had been publicly identified in connection with his death in the reporting available online.
As family and friends prepared to say goodbye, funeral home notices recorded the date of death and arrangements in Birmingham, underscoring how the violence of that afternoon left a space that had to be filled with memorial plans and mourning. Those notices did not address investigative details, and the publicly available reporting likewise did not describe any later arrest, charges, trial proceedings, or convictions tied to the shooting.
