On a Sunday evening, March 26, 2023, Demetrius Antwan Davis Jr., a 25-year-old Black / African American male, was fatally shot in Birmingham, Alabama. The incident occurred around 6 p.m. at a Circle K on Tallapoosa Street. Davis, a former football player at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was pumping gas when an assailant approached him and opened fire. When police arrived, they found Davis unresponsive in the parking lot with the gas nozzle still in his vehicle's tank.
Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead at the scene.
Investigators quickly determined that the shooting was not a random act of violence but rather a targeted ambush. Evidence at the scene suggested that Davis may have returned fire during the attack. The motive for the killing is believed to be retaliation for a prior incident in which a family member of the suspect had been shot. This shooting was part of a string of violence in the city, with Davis being one of eight people killed in just eight days.
The day after the shooting, police arrested 51-year-old Byron Dedric Steele in connection with the murder. The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office subsequently issued a warrant charging Steele with capital murder. He was then booked into the Birmingham City Jail.
Tragically, this was not the first time the Davis family had experienced such a loss. Nearly five years earlier, on a Sunday in October 2018, Demetrius's father, Demetrius Antwan Davis Sr., was also shot and killed at a gas station in the western part of the city. His father's murder, which was also considered a targeted attack, remains unsolved.
