Martavious Thomas, a 31-year-old Black man, was killed the night of May 6, 2021, in Montgomery, Alabama, when gunfire erupted along the 4700 block of Park Towne Way. Police were called to the area at about 9:00 p.m., and first responders arrived to find him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead there, in the open, before the night could give way to morning, leaving investigators to piece together what had happened and who had pulled the violence into that quiet stretch of roadway.
As the days passed, authorities said they had identified a suspect: Xzavier Lee Johnson. By mid-June, the search had widened beyond ordinary patrol work—U.S. Marshals and a fugitive task force were involved, and public warnings described Johnson as wanted in connection with Thomas’s killing and urged anyone with information to come forward. Reports at the time described him as armed and dangerous, and they circulated identifying details meant to turn a name into a face someone might recognize in a parking lot, at a doorway, or in passing traffic.
The chase ended on June 25, 2021. Montgomery Police announced Johnson had been taken into custody by the United States Marshals Task Force and booked into the Montgomery County Detention Facility. He was charged with murder in Thomas’s death, and booking information also listed additional charges of shooting into an occupied building, reflecting the broader danger investigators believed accompanied the gunfire that night. Public reports and jail information at the time listed a $150,000 bond on the murder charge, alongside separate bond amounts tied to the shooting-into-an-occupied-building counts.
In the wake of the killing, Thomas’s death was mourned publicly as well as investigated—funeral notices and memorial postings recorded the abruptness of his loss and the gathering planned to honor him. A graveside service was announced for May 22, 2021, at Forest Hills Cemetery in Snowdoun, a final ceremony set against the fact that his life had ended suddenly, before anyone outside the scene could fully understand why.
