Courtney Woods, a 22-year-old Black man from Birmingham, was killed on the afternoon of December 14, 2021, in what police described as a sudden, violent burst of gunfire outside a Shell gas station along the 3800 block of East Lake Boulevard. The call came in around 3:00 p.m., and when officers arrived they found chaos at the edge of the parking lot—his brother, Lorenzo, down outside the station with a gunshot wound, still responsive as help rushed in.
As officers fanned out to canvass the area, they found Courtney nearby in a grassy stretch by a service road, where he was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators said the early picture pointed to the brothers being shot while sitting inside a vehicle, then trying to run as the shooting unfolded. Reports also noted that someone else arrived at a local hospital with a gunshot wound, though police could not confirm that injury was tied to the same attack.
In the weeks that followed, the case was treated as a double-homicide investigation, and on January 18, 2022, Birmingham police announced an arrest: Jakobie Deontay Smith, 19, of Birmingham. He was booked and charged with two counts of capital murder, and authorities said he was being held without bond. Even with that headline development, investigators emphasized the story wasn’t finished—detectives said they were still pursuing additional suspects.
Later, a separate summary of Birmingham homicide cases reported that the capital-murder charges against Smith were dismissed in March by a judge for lack of probable cause, with the matter left pending possible grand-jury consideration. Public reporting around the case continued to reflect an investigation that, at least at times, was described as broader than a single suspected shooter, with early accounts indicating multiple rounds fired into the vehicle the brothers were in before they fled.
