Calvin Square Jr., a 32-year-old male from Birmingham, Alabama, died on April 25, 2007, after a shooting that unfolded in the Ensley area. That day, what began as an altercation with another man escalated in the parking lot of an apartment complex on the 2000 block of Avenue J, in the Tuxedo community. In the chaos of the confrontation, Square was shot in the chest, the kind of sudden, close-range violence that turns an ordinary moment into a life-ending one.
He was rushed from the scene
to UAB Hospital, where doctors fought to save him, but his injuries proved fatal. The news of his death rippled outward—through the neighborhood where it happened, through the city that tallied yet another loss, and through the circle of people who knew him as more than a name attached to a violent night.
Investigators quickly focused on the man involved in the dispute. The suspect surrendered to police at the scene, a detail that might sound like the beginning of accountability, but it did not become that. Despite the surrender, no charge was filed, and no arrest was recorded in connection with Square’s death, leaving the case in a grim limbo where a known confrontation and a known shooter did not translate into prosecution.
In the days that followed, the public record shifted from the violence of the parking lot to the quieter language of farewell. Square was remembered as a member of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, and his family prepared to lay him to rest with funeral services held on May 5, 2007, at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Birmingham, followed by burial at Carver Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Kisha Square, along with children and close family members who carried forward the weight of a death that came abruptly, and a case that, at least in the available public accounts, never moved into the courtroom.
