In the early evening of January 6, 2021, a burst of gunfire at the Peppertree Apartments on Sperry Road in Mobile, Alabama, shattered the calm and left a young man dying. The victim was 25-year-old Larry Roberts, who sustained a fatal gunshot wound. The events of that night would lead to a five-month-long investigation, culminating in the arrest of a man not much older than Roberts himself.
According to the Mobile Police Department, the shooting was not a random act of violence but was
connected to a burglary in progress. Investigators determined that Larry Roberts was in the process of burglarizing an apartment at the complex. As he was leaving the unit, he was confronted and shot by 25-year-old Raheem Catlin. After being wounded, Roberts managed to flee the immediate scene, running to the nearby Houndsrun Apartments before collapsing and succumbing to his injuries.
The investigation into Roberts' death was complex. In the immediate aftermath, police sought the public's help in identifying three men who were seen on hospital surveillance footage dropping off a second victim from the same shooting incident. This second individual, a 19-year-old who was also shot at the Peppertree Apartments, survived his injuries. The three men were wanted for questioning to piece together the full sequence of events that led to Roberts' death.
After months of diligent police work, the investigation zeroed in on Raheem Catlin as the primary suspect in the fatal shooting of Larry Roberts. In June 2021, a grand jury indicted Catlin for murder. He was subsequently arrested and booked into the Mobile Metro Jail, bringing a measure of resolution to a case that had begun with a chaotic night of violence. The charges against Catlin suggested a narrative of a burglary that turned deadly, forever altering the lives of two young men and their families.
