Birmingham leaders plead for information on mass shooting and announce reward money

 1662433122 
1727095837

The scene of a fatal Saturday night shooting outside Hush, a hookah lounge, in the Five Points South neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala., Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024.

AP Photo, Vasha Hunt

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Officials in Birmingham, Alabama, pleaded Monday with members of the public for information leading to arrests in a weekend mass shooting that killed four people and injured more than a dozen others, announcing rewards totaling $100,000.

“I want to make myself very clear on what the priority is: It is to hunt down, capture, arrest and convict the people who are responsible for this mass shooting.” Mayor Randall Woodfin said at a news conference Monday with other officials.

Authorities have still made no arrests after Saturday’s shooting killed four people and left 17 others injured. Police described it as a targeted “hit” on someone by multiple shooters who opened fire on a crowd waiting in line outside a nightspot in Birmingham’s bustling Five Points South district.

Police believe that the shooters targeted at least one of the victims and that others were killed or injured in the barrage of gunfire, Chief Scott Thurmond said. Five of the injured victims remain in the hospital, he said. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward, and Crime Stoppers is offering $50,000, officials said. Tipsters can remain anonymous.

The shooting — Birmingham’s third quadruple homicide of the year — has put a spotlight on a city once best known for its role in the Civil Rights Movement but more recently plagued by gun violence.

Three of the nation’s 31 mass shootings this year occurred in Birmingham, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. Birmingham, a city of about 200,000, has seen 114 homicides this year. Chicago, with more than 10 times the population, has seen a little over 400 homicides this year.

Saturday’s shooting rocked an area of restaurants and bars that is often busy on weekend nights. It occurred on the sidewalk and street outside Hush Lounge as a long line of people waited to enter. Blood stains remained on the sidewalk until firefighters washed them away later Sunday.

Police identified the three victims found on the sidewalk as Anitra Holloman, 21, of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, Tahj Booker, 27, of Birmingham, and Carlos McCain, 27, of Birmingham. The fourth victim was identified Monday as Roderick Lynn Patterson Jr., 26.

Police said about 100 shell casings were recovered. In a statement late Sunday, police said the shooters are believed to have used “machine gun conversion devices” that make semiautomatic weapons fire more rapidly.

“We’re looking at whether the switch was used in this particular case, or was this an assault rifle that was fully automatic or some other type of weapon,” Thurmond said Monday.

The Birmingham mayor had urged state and federal officials to give cities more tools to address gun violence. He put both hands behind his back Monday to illustrate what it is like for cities to combat crime. Alabama last year abolished the requirement to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public.

“This mass shooting has a heavy toll of the community as a whole, but nothing more harmful than the emotional and physical pain of these actual victims,” Woodfin said.

___

This story has been corrected to show that there have been 31 mass killings in the nation this year, not 23 mass shootings.

 

Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit

A U.S. district court is scheduled to consider whether to approve the settlement next week, in a case that marked the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems.

Under Trump, the Federal Trade Commission is abandoning its ban on noncompetes

Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson has called his agency's rule banning noncompetes unconstitutional. Still, he says protecting workers against noncompetes remains a priority.

Anthropic to pay authors $1.5B to settle lawsuit over pirated chatbot training material

The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay authors $3,000 per book in a landmark settlement over pirated chatbot training material.

You can trust the jobs report, Labor Department workers urge public

A strongly-worded statement from Bureau of Labor Statistics workers comes a month after President Trump attacked the integrity of the jobs numbers they release monthly.

Headed to the FBI, Missouri’s Andrew Bailey opposed abortion, backed Trump

Andrew Bailey rose quickly to be state attorney general of Missouri where he built a record for fighting abortion and defending Donald Trump. Now he's a co-deputy director of the FBI.

How Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans are reacting to Trump’s National Guard threats

Even after a federal court ruled his use of the National Guard in LA was illegal, the president has weighed sending troops to Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans. Here's where things stand in those cities.

More Crime Coverage