Birmingham passes 2023 homicide total
BIRMINGHAM Ala.
November 13, 2024
A man was shot to death while driving on Birmingham’s busy Parkway East Monday morning.
Police identified the victim as Enrique Cortes Martinez. He was 45 and lived in Birmingham.
His 5-year-old grandson was also in the pickup truck but escaped harm.
The child has been reunited with his family.
Cortes’s death marks the city’s 136th homicide this year, which puts the tally over the total in 2023 with more than month left in the year.
Just before 8 a.m., East Precinct officers were dispatched to a person shot call in the 200 block of Gadsden Highway, which is in front of CVS.
They arrived to find the victim in 9300 block of Parkway East, slumped over the steering wheel of his truck.
Witnesses said Cortes had been shot once in the head. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 8:15 a.m.
Bystanders rushed to help the victim.
One woman, who didn’t want to give her name, said the man appears to have been able to stop the truck and put it in park before becoming unresponsive.
She said the man had a pulse when she first got to him but was unconscious. She started CPR but to no avail.
Other bystanders took the child to CVS.
A worker at CVS said the boy was anxious and upset. Witnesses said he began to cry as officers escorted him from the scene to the East Precinct to try and locate other family members.
“I can imagine he’s shaken up,’’ said Officer Truman Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald said the investigation so far indicates the victim was driving on the Parkway when a separate vehicle pulled alongside him, and someone fired shots into the truck.
The motive has not yet been determined, and it’s not clear if Cortes was targeted.
“We are grateful this happened in such a commercial area because we’ve already been able to tap into some resources, including surveillance Fitzgerald said. “We have officers and detectives following up on those leads.”
With 135 homicides, Birmingham in 2023 saw its first drop in violent deaths in five years.
The city ended 2022 with 144 homicides, making it the deadliest year in recent Birmingham history.
Birmingham ended 2021 with 132 homicides; 2020 with 122 homicides; 2019 with 106 homicides; and 2018 with 107 homicides.
The 2022 homicide total surpassed the highest number recorded in recent memory — 141 in 1991. Birmingham’s all-time record for homicides was in 1933 with 148 slayings.
Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
Al.com
