On the evening of October 6, 2024, the life of Nathan Littleton, a 28-year-old Black man, came to a violent end in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Tuscumbia Police Department officers responded to a call about a shooting just after 7 p.m. at a residence on Paul E. Johnson Memorial Drive. Inside the home, where Littleton had been staying with a friend for a few months, they found him on the floor with several gunshot wounds.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Initially, authorities treated the case as a death investigation pending an official report from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. The autopsy confirmed that Littleton died from multiple gunshot wounds, including some to his back. With this finding, the investigation was reclassified as a homicide, and the focus shifted to finding the person responsible for his death.
Two days later, on October 8, police arrested 27-year-old DeKoven Melique Williams of Florence, Alabama, and charged him with murder. Investigators believed Williams had been at the residence hanging out on the day of the shooting. During their investigation, they found a gun in Williams’s car that they suspected was the weapon used to kill Littleton. Williams claimed he had acted in self-defense, alleging that Littleton was attempting to rob him.
On November 14, 2024, a Colbert County grand jury indicted Williams for murder. The indictment stated that Williams intentionally caused Nathan Littleton's death by shooting him with a gun. He was held at the Colbert County Jail on a $350,000 bond while awaiting trial.
The case went to trial the following year. On October 31, 2025, after deliberating for about two and a half hours, a Colbert County jury found DeKoven Williams guilty of the murder of Nathan Littleton. In January 2026, Colbert County Circuit Judge Kyle Brown sentenced Williams to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Williams was also ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution to the Alabama Crime Victim's Compensation Commission and was given credit for time already served.
