Jennifer Lee Wear, a 51-year-old woman, was killed on October 15, 2023, in a hit-and-run in east Birmingham, turning what should have been an ordinary Sunday afternoon into a case that has lingered without a public resolution. Authorities said she was walking near the intersection of 87th Street North and 5th Avenue North, on the edge of the East Lake area, at about 12:30 to 12:35 p.m. when a vehicle struck her. The impact was fatal. The driver did not stay.
By the time the scene settled and officials began piecing together what had happened, Wear had died there in the street, and the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office publicly identified her as the victim.
The known public facts form a stark and brief picture. Police said the vehicle left the area after hitting her, and the Birmingham Police Department opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death. Public reporting at the time described the case as a hit-and-run pedestrian death, with appeals for information from anyone who might know what happened. In the days after the collision, the story that emerged was less about a confrontation or known suspect than about sudden violence and disappearance: a woman walking in daylight, a vehicle that struck her, and a driver gone before help or accountability could arrive.
What followed, at least in the sources available online, was silence where an arrest announcement might have been. I did not find any credible online reporting that identified a suspect by name, described an arrest, announced criminal charges, or documented a prosecution or conviction in Jennifer Lee Wear’s death. A recently updated Birmingham homicide listing likewise notes that no charges have been announced in the case, reinforcing the picture left by the initial reports: that the driver remained unknown in public reporting, and that the case had not, at least publicly, reached the stage of an arrest or court proceeding.
Outside the criminal investigation, the online record shows the human aftermath. Her obituary said she was living in Birmingham and was formerly of Florence, and that she passed away suddenly that Sunday. It announced a graveside service later that month in Leoma, Tennessee, offering the one softer note in a case otherwise defined by blunt facts and unanswered questions. In the public record that remains online, Jennifer Lee Wear’s death is remembered both as a personal loss and as an unsolved hit-and-run: a woman struck in midday, a driver who vanished, and a case for which no public arrest has surfaced.
