Demetrius Antwan Davis Jr., 25, was fatally shot on Sunday evening, March 26, 2023, at about 6 p.m. while pumping gas at a Circle K on Tallapoosa Street in Birmingham, Alabama. Police found him unresponsive in the parking lot with the gas nozzle still in his vehicle’s tank; Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead at the scene.

Investigators described the attack as a targeted ambush rather than a random shooting. Evidence suggested Davis may have returned fire, and authorities believe the motive was retaliation tied to a prior incident in which a family member of the suspect had been shot. The shooting was one of eight homicides in the city over an eight-day span.

The day after the killing, police arrested 51-year-old Byron Dedric Steele and the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office issued a capital murder warrant; Steele was booked into the Birmingham City Jail. Nearly five years earlier, in October 2018, Davis’s father, Demetrius Antwan Davis Sr., had also been shot and killed at a gas station in western Birmingham; that earlier slaying remains unsolved.

Anyone with information about either killing or who knew the Davises is asked to come forward.