A dispute between two men at the Higgins Court Apartments in Athens, Alabama, on March 14, 2016, ended with the shooting death of 41-year-old Kevin Kirk Bell. Police found Bell on the ground between two apartment buildings on Hine Street with a single gunshot wound to the face; he was pronounced dead at the scene. Bell lived at the complex with his mother and was remembered as comical, smart, and kindhearted.

That morning, 28-year-old Frank Harper Franklin IV of Decatur turned himself in to the Decatur Police Department and was arrested and charged with Bell’s murder. Witnesses had seen the two men talking in the lot between the buildings shortly before the shot. At trial Franklin admitted firing the shot but said he acted in self-defense, testifying that an argument began after he accompanied his girlfriend to retrieve belongings and that he believed Bell had a handgun. The medical examiner testified the fatal bullet entered near Bell’s left eye.