Michael Stiles Jr., a 19-year-old Black male from Selma, Alabama, was killed on September 27, 2021, after a daylight burst of gunfire shattered a normal afternoon on King Street. Police said he was riding as a passenger in a vehicle traveling along the 900 block when someone stepped into the roadway and began shooting into the car. In a matter of seconds, the ride became a desperate rush to escape the bullets, and Stiles was struck.
The shooting happened around midafternoon, in a part of town where people would normally expect to hear traffic and conversation, not gunshots. Investigators said the exact motive was not immediately known, and they treated the case as a homicide from the start. Stiles was taken to Vaughan Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, leaving family and friends to grapple with the shock of how quickly a life could be taken on an open city street.
In the first public statements after the killing, authorities described an active investigation that was still trying to identify who pulled the trigger and why. At that stage, police reported no arrests and appealed for information that might point them toward the shooter, emphasizing that the person responsible had walked away from the scene after firing into the vehicle.
As the investigation continued, mourning moved from the street to the places where Selma’s families gather to say goodbye. Funeral arrangements for Stiles were announced for early October, with a graveside service scheduled for October 9, 2021, at Mt. Olive No. 1 Church Cemetery in Sardis, Alabama. The service marked the transition from the immediate urgency of the crime scene to the quieter, heavier reality left behind—an empty seat in the lives of the people who knew him, and unanswered questions about what led to the gunman’s decision to open fire.
