Rodney Hilleary, a 55-year-old Black man, was found dead the evening of December 14, 2018, inside a home in Birmingham’s Pratt City neighborhood. Officers were dispatched just after 5 p.m. to a residence in the 500 block of Avenue T after a call about an unconscious man; when police entered they found Hilleary unresponsive on the floor and the coroner pronounced him dead at the scene. Birmingham Police treated the incident as a homicide but did not release a cause of death in early public updates.

Family and a published notice described Hilleary as having been murdered that Friday evening, placing the time around 5:15 p.m., a narrow window that overlaps the police response. Early reporting noted there were no suspects in custody and no arrests had been announced; investigators asked anyone with information to contact homicide detectives.

If anyone knew Rodney, lived in Pratt City in December 2018, or has information about what happened on Avenue T that evening, please come forward to detectives.