Aldrick Jarreau Garrett, a 23-year-old Black male from Talladega, was shot on July 9, 2015, on the 800 block of Scott Street, in a burst of violence that left his family and neighborhood reeling. Talladega police were called to the scene around 6:20 p.m. and found him suffering from a gunshot wound. He was flown to UAB Hospital, but he did not survive.
In the first hours after the shooting, investigators said no suspect was in custody and appealed to the public for tips as the case opened under the shadow of grief and uncertainty.
What emerged in the coverage was the portrait of a young man whose death landed hard on the people around him. News reports identified him as the son of local poet and author Marshall Pope, and his obituary reflected how quickly the community gathered around the family, with a candlelight vigil announced in the days after the killing and funeral services set for July 18, 2015, in Talladega. The public mourning gave the case a human weight beyond the police briefings, turning it from a crime scene on Scott Street into the story of a son whose absence was immediately and painfully felt.
About a month later, the investigation produced an arrest. On August 13, 2015, Talladega police announced that they had arrested 19-year-old Rodericious Octavious Lee of Talladega and charged him with Garrett’s murder. Reporting at the time said the arrest followed witness information and other evidence gathered with help from the Talladega County Drug and Violent Crime Task Force. One report also noted that bond had not yet been set when the charge was announced.
Publicly available online reporting that could be found now is much clearer about the shooting and the arrest than about what happened afterward. The accessible sources located for this synopsis confirm Lee’s arrest and murder charge, but they do not clearly show, in the material available through current web search, whether the case later ended in indictment, trial, conviction, acquittal, or dismissal. So the known public arc, based on the available online coverage, is that Garrett was shot on Scott Street, died after being flown to Birmingham for treatment, and that police later identified and arrested one suspect, Rodericious Octavious Lee, in connection with the killing.
