On the afternoon of May 5, 2022, 57-year-old Raymond Earl Hamilton was found dead from an apparent gunshot wound at a home on Alliance Road in the Alliance community of Bessemer, Alabama. Jefferson County deputies were called for a shooting and discovered Hamilton deceased at the scene after what investigators described as a violent confrontation between a tenant and his landlord.

Deputies soon located a nearby man identified as Paul Edwin Vance, the landlord, but as officers approached he shot himself. Vance was airlifted to UAB Hospital with life-threatening injuries and later died from the self-inflicted wound. Investigators treated the incident as a murder-suicide arising from a landlord-tenant conflict; because the only named suspect died, there were no arrests or court proceedings.

If anyone knew Hamilton, Vance, or witnessed events on Alliance Road that day, please come forward with information.