Alfred Smart, a 24-year-old Black man, was killed in the early hours of December 5, 2021, in Montgomery, Alabama, after gunfire erupted along the 2800 block of Vaughn Plaza Road near the Vaughn Plaza shopping center just off Eastern Boulevard. Police were called to the area at about 1:15 a.m., arriving to find Smart shot and lying at the scene, where he was pronounced dead.
Two other men were also shot in the same incident and survived with injuries described as non-life-threatening, leaving detectives to sort through a chaotic aftermath in a busy commercial corridor that had suddenly turned into a crime scene.
In the days that followed, investigators began identifying the people they believed were responsible, and on December 15, 2021, Montgomery police announced their first arrest. They charged Jamie Williams, 23, of Montgomery with murder in connection with Smart’s death, saying the charge stemmed from the shooting on Vaughn Plaza Road. Public reports indicated Williams was identified as a suspect and later taken into custody with the involvement of the U.S. Marshals.
The case did not stop with a single suspect. On January 5, 2022, police said they made a second arrest, charging Kentarius Stephens, 21, with murder and attempted murder tied to the same Vaughn Plaza Road shooting. The attempted-murder allegation aligned with the earlier reports that two additional men had been wounded but survived, expanding the case from a single homicide to a broader act of violence with multiple victims.
Beyond the arrests and initial charging announcements, public updates describing what prosecutors alleged happened in the moments before the shots were fired, what evidence led to the identifications, or how responsibility was divided between the two defendants were limited in the available reporting. What is clear from the public record is that the investigation named two suspects—Williams and Stephens—and that each faced a murder charge connected to Smart’s death, with Stephens additionally charged with attempted murder, as the December 5 scene on Vaughn Plaza Road continued to echo in court filings and custody records afterward.
