On the night of August 25, 2021, Kevin Lemond Devose, age 47, Male, of Birmingham, Alabama, walked into the Smart Food Mart in Ensley, a small convenience store at the 900 block of 20th Street. It was late—just before 10:00 p.m.—and the routine hum of a neighborhood stop was suddenly broken by a confrontation that turned lethal. Police said a verbal altercation flared inside or just at the entrance of the store, escalating in seconds from harsh words to violence.
When officers from
Birmingham’s West Precinct arrived, they found Devose down on the floor, unresponsive, with a gunshot wound to the head. Birmingham Fire and Rescue pronounced him dead at the scene. Early accounts from investigators indicated the shooting was not random: police described it as an argument between two people that ended with one person pulling a gun and firing. In the immediate aftermath, the gunman ran from the store and disappeared on foot, last seen heading north toward Avenue I, leaving the neighborhood with flashing blue lights, taped-off pavement, and unanswered questions about what had sparked the deadly moment.
As detectives worked the case through the following weeks, the story sharpened from a search for an unknown shooter into a named suspect. Investigators presented their findings to prosecutors, and a murder warrant was issued. In early October 2021, Birmingham police arrested Marquise Terell Taylor in connection with Devose’s death, announcing he was taken into custody on the murder charge tied to the Smart Food Mart shooting. The arrest marked the moment the case shifted—from an urgent hunt for a fleeing gunman to the slow, procedural grind of the courts, where the charge would have to be proven beyond the blur of a chaotic night.
Public jail records later listed Taylor as a pretrial inmate in Jefferson County with a $100,000 bond, reflecting that the case was being held for court rather than treated as a closed chapter. The available public reporting on the homicide focused on the shooting, the suspect’s initial flight, and the subsequent arrest and murder charge; it did not provide detailed, widely published updates about a trial outcome or conviction in the same public-facing coverage. Devose’s family, meanwhile, moved through the rituals that follow sudden loss—announcing services in the days ahead—while the place where he was killed remained, for many in Ensley, a grim reminder of how quickly an ordinary stop can become a fatal crossroads.
