In the early hours of Tuesday, June 24, 2025, 17-year-old Gabriel Elijah Hooks was killed in Atmore, Alabama, after gunfire erupted following an illegal street race on Carver Avenue near 18th Avenue. Investigators say more than 50 shots were fired while money was being exchanged; Hooks, a former football standout at Escambia County High School, was taken by a private vehicle to Atmore Community Hospital, where he died. A 20-year-old woman was also struck multiple times and survived with non-life-threatening injuries.

The inquiry produced multiple arrests. Authorities charged 22-year-old Tyler Hall of Evergreen with murder and attempted murder; 24-year-old Javarius Watkins of Evergreen surrendered and faced a murder charge. Four people from Atmore were later arrested — 20-year-old Exavion Bradley, 19-year-old Kcarheem McKenzie, 18-year-old Timothy Sanders, and a 17-year-old juvenile — and all six suspects were booked on murder and attempted murder counts in connection with Hooks’s death and the injured woman’s shooting.

Investigators also say evidence tied Bradley, McKenzie, Sanders, and the juvenile to an unsolved October 31, 2024, shooting in which multiple occupied houses and vehicles were struck; those four face additional counts including attempted murder and discharging a firearm into dwellings and vehicles.

If anyone witnessed the race, the shooting, or has information about who fired those rounds, please share what is known with investigators.