Dewayne Powell, a 41-year-old Black man, was killed on February 23, 2016, in Birmingham, Alabama. Firefighters and police responded before dawn to a house fire in the 700 block of New Hill Avenue in the East Brownville neighborhood and found Powell inside. Initially reported as a fatal blaze, investigators determined he had been shot and his body partially burned, and they said the fire may have been set after the shooting to destroy evidence.

The scene suggested possible calculation: homicide detectives examined whether the fire was part of a planned act or a later attempt to cover up the killing. Public reporting did not identify any named suspect or an arrest, and subsequent summaries of Birmingham homicides from 2016 continued to list the case as having no arrest. Powell had been released from prison in April 2014 after serving many years for a 1993 murder tied to the same block, a detail that added an additional, tragic resonance to his death.

Anyone with information about what happened on New Hill Avenue that morning is asked to come forward.