On a Friday afternoon in Birmingham, Alabama, the lives of four lifelong friends were violently cut short. On February 16, 2024, Cortez Ray, a 32-year-old Black man, was at a neighborhood car wash in the Smithfield community with his friends Kevin McGhee, 38, Talton "TJ" Tate, 36, and Terrell Edwards, 38. The men were gathered at the car wash, which Tate ran out of his family home, when they were ambushed in a targeted attack.
Surveillance cameras captured a black Hyundai Elantra
circling the block for about 10 minutes before the shooting. Around 2:40 p.m., the car stopped and two people dressed in all black emerged, one from the passenger side and another from the back seat. Brandishing firearms, including a long gun, they opened fire on the group of friends. The entire assault lasted less than a minute. Cortez Ray, Talton Tate, and Terrell Edwards were pronounced dead at the scene. Kevin McGhee was rushed to UAB Hospital, where he died a short time later.
The victims were deeply rooted in their community. McGhee and Edwards were cousins. Edwards, a city employee with the Parks and Recreation department, had clocked out of work just 15 minutes before the shooting and had been picked up by McGhee. McGhee’s mother remembered her son as a father, a fiancé, and the life of any party, recalling that she had been on the phone with him just moments before he was killed. Tate was a father of four. Autopsies later revealed that Tate had been shot once, while the other three men had been shot multiple times.
Investigators recovered more than 35 shell casings at the scene, fired from two different guns. Just 20 minutes after the shooting, the black Hyundai Elantra used in the attack was found torched and abandoned about five miles away. Police believed from the outset that the four men had been specifically targeted.
In early March 2024, authorities announced an arrest. Lamarion Tykese Charlie, then 20 years old, was taken into custody and charged with capital murder. During the investigation, Charlie maintained that he had only driven the getaway car. Police also stated they were seeking another person of interest in connection with the shooting, but the two individuals who carried out the killings have never been publicly identified.
In a major development, Lamarion Tykese Charlie later signed a plea agreement. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of intentional murder in exchange for a sentence of 30 years in prison. As of that plea deal, the two gunmen responsible for the deaths of Cortez Ray and his three friends had not been charged.
