Albert Fuller, a 54-year-old Black/African American man from Charleston, West Virginia, was fatally shot on the city’s East End on the evening of April 4, 2015. Shortly before 7 p.m., Charleston police were called to the intersection of Washington Street East and Ruffner Avenue after reports of multiple gunshots. Officers arrived to find Fuller critically wounded from multiple gunshot injuries.
Emergency personnel transported him to CAMC General Hospital, but he died from his injuries a short time later.
The killing happened in a neighborhood where residents said this degree of violence was unusual, particularly because the Charleston Police Department was only about a block away. Fuller was apparently well known in the area, and friends later described him as a “gentle giant.” A makeshift memorial appeared near the intersection, with people stopping to leave messages and remember him. One woman who had spoken and joked with Fuller shortly before the shooting recalled returning to the area and seeing people desperately trying to save his life on the sidewalk.
Police quickly focused their investigation on Terrell Shaquel White. Investigators said multiple witnesses reported seeing White shoot Fuller, and authorities obtained particularly significant evidence from a surveillance camera at a nearby Tudor’s Biscuit World that reportedly recorded the shooting. White was located shortly afterward at a residence on Thompson Street, roughly three blocks from where Fuller was shot. Officers arrested him, brought him to the Charleston Police Department for questioning, and then transferred him to the South Central Regional Jail. He was initially charged with murder, with contemporary reporting describing the charge as first-degree murder, and he was held without bail.
As the case developed, prosecutors said Fuller and White knew one another and had been involved in an altercation before the shooting. White’s defense later maintained that he had acted in self-defense, but prosecutors strongly disputed that account. Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor J.C. MacCallum said witness statements indicated White had been at the scene during the confrontation, left the area, then returned armed with a gun and shot Fuller in the back. That sequence was central to the prosecution’s position that the killing was not an act of legitimate self-defense.
The prosecution ultimately did not take the case through a murder trial. On January 18, 2018, White pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, exposing him to a potential prison term of 10 to 40 years. The plea represented a reduction from the first-degree murder accusation reported when he was initially arrested. His sentencing was scheduled for March, with prosecutors preparing to seek the maximum sentence available under the plea.
White appeared for sentencing in Kanawha County Circuit Court on March 20, 2018. Prosecutors asked that he receive the full 40-year sentence, while the defense requested that he instead be sent to the Anthony Center. Fuller’s sisters attended the hearing, where Annette Fuller described the killing as senseless and spoke about the continuing damage White’s actions had caused both families. White apologized to Fuller’s family in court, acknowledged that what he had done was wrong, and expressed regret over the suffering his actions had caused.
The judge sentenced White to 24 years in prison for second-degree murder. He was given credit for time already served and became eligible for parole after serving 10 years. The guilty plea and prison sentence brought the criminal prosecution to a conclusion nearly three years after Fuller was shot, transforming a case that began with a rapid arrest, eyewitness accounts and surveillance evidence into a second-degree murder conviction and a lengthy prison term for the man responsible for Fuller’s death.
