Teresa Wright was a 40-year-old woman from Birmingham, Alabama, whose life ended on the night of July 8, 2009, inside a home on the 200 block of 22nd Street Southwest. Police were called to the address after reports that two people had been shot, and when officers arrived they found Wright and a man, Talmadge Owens, down inside the residence.
According to accounts of the investigation, a family member discovered the pair on the kitchen floor, both suffering from gunshot wounds, and
paramedics pronounced them dead at the scene. In the first hours after the discovery, investigators described the case as domestic violence and said the evidence pointed to Owens shooting Wright and then turning the gun on himself.
Because the suspected shooter also died at the scene, there were no later arrests, prosecutions, or trials connected to Wright’s death in the publicly available reporting that identifies her and Owens in the same incident. In the official running list of Birmingham homicides for 2009, Wright’s death is recorded as part of an apparent murder-suicide, with Owens’ death described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In the days that followed, Wright’s family began the familiar, painful work of burying her—announcing funeral services in Birmingham and laying her to rest at Oakland Cemetery—while the circumstances of her final night remained framed by investigators as a domestic killing that ended in the suspect’s suicide.
