Richard Mark Carter, 56, a Black male from Birmingham, Alabama, was discovered in the early hours of April 26, 2023, collapsed at the front of a Food Mart in the 2200 block of Bessemer Road. Police were called just before 2 a.m., and when officers and Birmingham Fire and Rescue arrived, the injury initially appeared to be a stabbing. Carter was still alive long enough to seek help, and paramedics rushed him to UAB Hospital, where he later died.
As daylight came and investigators began piecing together his last movements, the story shifted. An autopsy determined that Carter had been shot, not stabbed, turning what first looked like one kind of street violence into another. Detectives said they believed the gunfire likely happened somewhere else, with Carter making it to the store afterward in a desperate attempt to find safety and medical attention. In their early theory of the case, investigators pointed toward an apartment property on 31st Street in Ensley as a possible scene of the shooting.
In the public updates available from that period, authorities did not name a suspect, and they said no one was in custody in connection with Carter’s death. The killing was treated as an active homicide investigation, with police urging anyone who knew what happened—who saw the moments before he arrived at the store, heard gunfire in the area, or recognized the sequence of events—to contact the Birmingham Police Department’s Homicide Unit.
