Was UAB Engineering Student Jesse Marchant Birt Killed For Calling 911 For Someone In Alabama?

Investigators are still searching for answers more than a year after a mechanical engineering student was fatally shot in an Alabama parking lot early in the morning.

Jesse Alan Marchant Birt, 24, phoned police shortly before he was fatally shot in the parking lot of a Birmingham apartment complex on October 12, 2020.

“I don’t know why that boy didn’t call 911 and go back inside,” said Jesse’s father, Timothy Birt, earlier. told AL.com in an interview at the time, adding that his son “wouldn’t harm the flea.”

Around 1:30 a.m., police rushed to the scene following a single shot report and found Birt with a gunshot wound. No arrest warrants have been issued.

Birmingham Police Department Sgt. Rod Mauldin said at the time that Birt called 911 to report an unidentified person who appeared to be handing a gun to another person in the parking lot.

Birmingham Police did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Wednesday to address any updates made in identifying Birt’s killer, but AL.com reported on Thursday. Three that the police are still looking for witnesses.

Police initially believed Birt was walking his dog on the property after they found a black Labrador in the complex. But Birt’s family says he doesn’t have a dog and is likely looking after a stray, AL.com reported. They believe slain animal advocates were likely trying to find the dog’s owner or search for the dog when it was killed.

“We assumed he was wandering around looking for the dog and we thought he saw something and called the police,” said Timothy Birt. “I assumed it was a woman in trouble. Jesse always stands up for what is right. My best guess is that they saw him call 911 and shoot him.”

Two days before his death, Timothy Birt sat down to a pizza dinner with his son and the two talked about his future. Jesse is a semester away from graduating from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has been hoping to work in thermodynamics and power generation or start a career in car building. The news of his son’s death hurt him and his wife.

“I told him I loved him and I was proud of him,” Timothy Birt told AL.com. “He was very happy.”

Birt says his son is very close to his mother, often talking to her on the phone “for hours”. He is the couple’s only son and he and his mother often play the video game Dungeons & Dragons together, Birt said.

Birt’s professor of thermodynamics, Dr. Hessam Taherian, has called him a “star” in his classes, under the Memorial Scholarship for Engineers was established at the school in the name of his parents.

Taherian said Birt was determined to become a “successful engineer who would do great work for the country and the world” before being mysteriously killed.

Hours after he died, Birt’s roommate, Chassidie ​​Hairston, called the police and the local hospital when she got home and couldn’t find him. She did not return her calls, she said. She feared the worst when neighbors told her that a person had been injured in a shooting earlier the same day.

Hairston told AL.com: “If he hears an argument, he will go out and try to calm the situation down. “I always begged him not to, but it was a moral thing for him. He just wanted to help. I was extremely scared for this reason. But that’s what you have to do. It was part of his heart. At least he was more likely to have helped someone else that night. ”