Mercedes Morris, a 21-year-old Black woman who had graduated from Lee High School a few years earlier, was remembered by her family as a role model. Her cousin, Xzavia Acklin, was traumatized by the loss, stating, "All I want to do is make her proud and she's gone. To what? Gun violence. It hurts me." In the wake of her death, her devastated family asked the community for help in finding who was responsible.
On the night of New Year's Day, January 1, 2014, Morris was waiting in a car parked in the driveway of a home on the 2700 block of Bridge Road in Huntsville, Alabama. At around 9:30 p.m., police said several offenders approached the residence and began shooting at the house. During the gunfire, Morris was struck.
Her boyfriend, who had been inside the home and was uninjured, came out and found Morris wounded in the car. He drove her to a Shell gas station at Blue Spring Road and Sparkman Drive, where he called 911.
Emergency responders transported Morris to Huntsville Hospital, but she was pronounced dead. Her death was the first homicide of 2014 in Huntsville.
Soon after, Huntsville Police arrested 24-year-old Lopez Marittia Rice and charged him with murder in connection with the fatal shooting. In April 2014, a judge granted Rice bond on the murder charge. While he was out of jail, he was arrested again on separate drug charges, and a judge subsequently denied him bond in November of that year.
Rice's murder trial began in September 2018, but it came to an abrupt end just two days later. Prosecutors informed the court that two key witnesses, who could have placed Rice at the scene of the crime, had gone into hiding. The witnesses reportedly told prosecutors they feared for their lives if they testified and would not come forward. Because their testimony was crucial to the case, the murder charge against Rice was dropped.
Due to the legal principle of double jeopardy, Lopez Rice cannot be tried again for the murder of Mercedes Morris. The case was officially dropped in September 2018 and remains unresolved.
