Taurus Lamond Hearns, a 49-year-old Black man from Birmingham, was out on his bicycle on the evening of October 9, 2022, when an ordinary ride through the city turned fatal. Reports said he was struck near 1st Avenue South and 18th Street South, in the area of Railroad Park and Five Points South, at about 7:21 p.m. The impact was severe, and even though a pastor at the scene tried to help by performing CPR, Hearns was taken to UAB Hospital and did not survive.
In the first hours after the crash, the loss carried an added cruelty because the driver did not stay. What happened was treated not simply as a traffic death, but as a hit-and-run that left his family and the city waiting for answers.
In the days that followed, Hearns was publicly identified, and his death moved from a breaking-news tragedy into a case that lingered. His obituary placed him firmly back where violent and sudden deaths always belong, with the people who knew him best, noting that he was Taurus Lamond Hearns Sr. of Birmingham and that his funeral services were held later that month. But the circumstances of how he died remained part of the story. The picture that emerged from reporting was that he had been riding through downtown when he was hit by a vehicle whose driver left the scene, turning a deadly collision into a criminal investigation.
That investigation eventually produced an arrest. James Louise Green Jr. was later identified by published reports as the suspect in the case. He was arrested in March 2023 and charged with reckless manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident in connection with Hearns’ death. The arrest suggested that investigators believed the case had moved beyond mystery and into accountability, though that development came months after Hearns was killed. For the family of a man who never came home from a bike ride, that delay had to have made the wait feel even longer.
The legal case continued after the arrest. Public reports said a Jefferson County grand jury indicted Green in April 2024 on the same charges, reckless manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident. That step pushed the matter deeper into the court system and marked the strongest formal action taken in the case that was publicly reported. Based on the available online information, Green is the only suspect publicly identified in connection with Hearns’ death. I did not find reliable online reporting showing additional suspects, nor did I find confirmed public reports of a trial verdict or conviction in this case. What remains most clear is the arc of the story itself: Taurus Lamond Hearns was killed while riding his bicycle in Birmingham, the driver fled, and after months of investigation one man was arrested and later indicted as the case moved toward prosecution.
