William Robert Ross, a 42-year-old man, came to Birmingham from Cullman, and whatever brought him to the 3900 block of 36th Avenue North on July 20, 2007, has never been clearly explained in public reporting. By the time the night turned violent, he was in front of an abandoned house in a part of the city where, years later, police would still be asking why he had been there at all. The answers never came easily. What did become clear is that gunfire erupted, Ross was struck multiple times, and he was rushed to UAB Hospital, where he died from his wounds.
The scene itself offered hints, but not resolution. Officers found several shell casings and a cell phone, the kind of details that suggest a story was left behind in fragments. People nearby reported hearing several shots, and one witness said she looked out and saw Ross sitting in the yard of the abandoned house. She also reported seeing a group of three to four people walking away from the area afterward. A car believed to be connected to Ross was towed from the scene. Those pieces painted the outline of a killing with possible witnesses and possible movement away from the gunfire, but not enough, at least publicly, to explain who pulled the trigger or why.
As the years passed, the case slipped into the category families dread most: a cold case that still needed someone to speak. In 2014, nearly seven years after the shooting, Birmingham police and Crime Stoppers were still publicly pushing for tips, openly acknowledging that the case remained unsolved. Chief A.C. Roper said they did not know why Ross was in that neighborhood, which underscored how much of the basic narrative remained missing even long after the homicide. Publicly available reporting tied to those appeals does not identify a named suspect, and I did not find credible online reporting showing an arrest, indictment, trial, or conviction in Ross’s killing. In the public record that is easily accessible online, his death remains the story of a man who arrived in Birmingham, was gunned down in front of an abandoned house, and left investigators chasing the silence of everyone who may have seen what happened.
