Marquis Kantrell Drakes Jr., a 24-year-old Black man from Center Point, was found shot inside a house in the 1400 block of 29th Street Ensley in Birmingham around midday on February 22, 2023. When Birmingham police officers entered the residence, they found him lying on the floor with an apparent gunshot wound after what investigators described as an altercation inside the home. Birmingham Fire and Rescue took him to UAB Hospital with life-threatening injuries, but he did not survive.
In the first hours after the shooting, the motive was still unclear, and the case opened as one of Birmingham’s early homicide investigations of 2023.
As detectives worked the scene, a woman who was there was detained as a person of interest and taken into custody for questioning. Early reports made clear that police believed the shooting grew out of a confrontation inside the residence rather than an attack from outside, but at that stage no criminal charges had been filed. Public reporting in the days immediately after Drakes’ death showed that investigators intended to present the evidence to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office for a decision on whether charges were warranted.
That decision changed the shape of the case. About a month later, on March 22, 2023, Birmingham police said the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office had ruled the killing a justifiable death. Police also said a firearm recovered at the scene was believed to have been in Drakes’ possession. With that ruling, the case did not proceed as a murder prosecution, and the woman initially taken into custody was not reported to have been charged in connection with his death. No public reporting located in reliable online sources shows any later arrest, indictment, trial, or conviction tied to the shooting. Instead, the case appears to have ended with the prosecutor’s determination that the use of deadly force was legally justified.
