Alex Dewayne Bedwell, 38, a White man, was shot on the afternoon of February 5, 2017, in the parking lot of the Emory Woods Condominiums along the 2500 block of Veteran’s Memorial Parkway in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Police and sheriff’s deputies rushed to the complex after reports of gunfire just before 5 p.m., and they found Bedwell down with multiple gunshot wounds. He was hurried to DCH, but the injuries were too severe; he died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
From the start, investigators framed the shooting as something personal rather than random. Officers said Bedwell and the shooter knew one another, and that the confrontation had been building as part of an ongoing argument tied to a woman. While the parking lot was still being processed and witnesses were being interviewed, authorities said the suspected shooter had not fled—he was still there when officers arrived.
That suspect was identified as Dillon Michael Lee, 25. Law enforcement took Lee into custody at the scene, and he was charged with murder. Early reports indicated he was held at the Tuscaloosa County Jail with bond set at $60,000 as the case moved into the courts.
Years later, the case’s paper trail shows it did not end with the initial arrest and charge. Lee’s case proceeded through Alabama’s appellate system, where the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the outcome in a decision noted as “without published opinion,” and a later entry reflects that an application for rehearing was overruled. The Alabama Supreme Court record then shows Lee sought further review, but the court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari in September 2021, leaving the lower court decision in place.
