Timothy Barnes, a 28-year-old Black man from Montgomery, Alabama, was still in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday evening when the calm broke. Around 7 p.m. on August 9, 2017, Montgomery Police and Fire Medics were sent to the 1200 block of Centennial Way after a report that someone had been shot. When they arrived, they found Barnes suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound. He was rushed to Jackson Hospital, but he did not survive.
By the next morning, detectives had opened a homicide investigation, but there was little they could say publicly about what had led to the shooting. The early updates carried the same hard truth families often hear in the first hours after violence: the case was active, the circumstances were still being worked, and answers would not come quickly.
A little over a week later, police announced they had a suspect in custody. Anthony Thomas Jr. was arrested and charged with one count of murder in connection with Barnes’s death, taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force. After the arrest, authorities said Thomas was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $150,000 bond.
As Montgomery mourned, Barnes’s death was also marked in the way so many are remembered—through the formal rituals of farewell. His obituary noted that he died on August 9, 2017, and that funeral services were scheduled for August 19, 2017 at Ross-Clayton Funeral Home Chapel, with interment to follow at Woodley Memorial Cemetery.
