In the late afternoon of November 10, 2018, a dispute in Birmingham, Alabama, escalated into a burst of gunfire that left Edward Tyurri Matthews, a 29-year-old Black / African American male, dead. The fatal encounter unfolded around 3:30 p.m. near a Shell service station on Oporto-Madrid Boulevard and Fifth Avenue North. When the shooting ceased, Matthews was found at the scene and pronounced dead.
The investigation into the shooting quickly led authorities to identify multiple
individuals believed to be involved. From a gray sedan, three people were implicated in the shootout. One of the occupants, 25-year-old Tavalues Andarius Johnson, was identified as a suspect in Matthews' death. However, Johnson himself had sustained injuries during the gunfight and succumbed to them twelve days later, on November 22, 2018. Before his death, authorities were preparing to charge him with capital murder.
Two other individuals in the sedan were also charged in connection with the incident. Patrick Dewayne Webb, 21 years old at the time, faced charges related to the killing of Matthews. At the time of the shootout, Webb was already under investigation for a string of robberies at Metro PCS stores. The third person, 21-year-old Gabrielle Lashay Moore, was charged with discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling. While an official motive for the deadly confrontation was not immediately released by law enforcement, there were suggestions that an ongoing personal dispute, possibly involving a woman, may have been the catalyst for the violence. The deaths of both Matthews and a primary suspect added a layer of complexity to the subsequent legal proceedings.
