On the night of September 22, 2021, 21-year-old Ahmad Rash Cockrell of Bessemer was shot in Birmingham’s Kingston area, in the 900 block of 44th Place North at the Morton Simpson Homes public housing community. Just after 9:30 p.m. a ShotSpotter alert registered multiple rounds and police received calls that two men had been shot. Officers found Cockrell unresponsive outside a residence; Birmingham Fire and Rescue pronounced him dead at the scene. A second man was wounded and taken to a hospital.

Contemporaneous accounts described the scene as a chaotic exchange of gunfire during an altercation, suggesting more than one person may have been firing. Authorities identified Cockrell publicly in the days after the killing and funeral notices show he was buried in Bessemer less than two weeks later. Later references note detectives submitted the case to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office for review and received a ruling, but do not clearly identify charges, a defendant, or a trial related to Cockrell’s death.

Did anyone in the Kingston community or the Morton Simpson Homes area at the time see or hear anything that could help clarify what happened that night?