This is an opinion column.
That thread. That infuriatingly annoying thread. That loose thread dangling from the sleeve of your favorite sweater.
That loose and dangerous thread.
You want to pull it, yet you don’t. You want to quickly yank it away, yet you don’t—afraid of where it might lead, how long it might be. Afraid it might unravel, leaving your sleeve frayed and unseemly. The sweater unwearable.
Damien Laron McDaniel III is that thread. That dangerous thread—though no longer loose.
He’s behind iron bars now, a 22-year-old from Fairfield yanked from our streets and charged with killing six people over just 72 hours: the September 19 killing of a 35-year-old mother police say was an innocent caught in a hail of fiery lead inside a bar on Ninth Street North; four people in the Sept. 21 mass shooting outside Hush in Five Points South (the crime that finally shook up from our numbness); and a 32-year-old man felled in yet another bullet hell-storm less than 24 hours later according to police documents, while being robbed of a backpack.
We know now what senseless (alleged) evil looks like. The senseless evil that plagued Birmingham for far too long. The senseless evil of gun violence gone amok. Of death. Of pain. Of terrorism. Among our own.
It left us frayed and frustrated—infuriated.
It has a new face now after long dwelling in the shadows as homicides in the city soared unfettered and seemingly unsolvable.
It has, most frighteningly, many faces. More faces likely than we yet know. Faces interwoven into the tapestry of an ecosystem where killing is treated less stringently than a cough. Where it is enacted without so much as a thought, often for cash. Where it is—let’s be real now—even enabled by some close to those pulling the switch-enhanced trigger.
Just pull the thread. Read the initial account of McDaniel’s arrest, deftly reported and crafted—intricately woven by my colleagues Carol Robinson and Managing Producer Jeremy Gray into a fine, cashmere, blood-drenched sweater.
A sweater with that infuriating thread. With McDaniel, a deadly (allegedly) connecting thread long, deep, and intricate strands of shooting and killings ripped from our most tragic headlines. Strands entangling too many neighborhoods, choking too many loved ones with grief, and ending too many lives.
Strands that make you want to pull out a whiteboard and revive your sentence-diagramming skills.
Strands that no doubt influenced the postponement of Fairfield City Schools’ homecoming and alumni joy last month, and caused Miles College, also in Fairfield, to move up its Oct. 5 homecoming kickoff and scratch its parade.
Strands reaching back almost a decade – to 11 homicides over eight years.
Just pull. There’s a 2015 shooting that, police say, sparked a retaliation killing the following year, of which Carlos De’Juan McCain was acquitted. McCain was among the four who died on the sidewalk outside Hush.
Keep pulling. Another victim outside Hush, Roderick Lynn Patterson, Jr. was charged with murder in a 2021 shooting at a Chevron station on First Ave. North. The charges were later dismissed at the urging of prosecutors, who cited, Robinson wrote, “death, unavailability, and non-cooperation of witnesses.”
Neither of the others who died outside Hush, tragically entangled, too—21-year-old mother Anitra Hollomon, and Taj Booker, 27, who witnesses said shielded Hollomon as bullets sprayed—has any record of criminal activity.
Pull the thread and it reveals that in April 2023 – 18 months ago – McDaniel pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder in a 2021 Fairfield shooting, was sentenced to 15 years in prison with two years to serve followed by three years of probation.
Pull the thread and it leads to three other strands, three others charged in the slaying of Jamarcus McIntyre the following day.
Pull and one of the three alleged in the killing, Larry Denzel Rollins, entangles (unfairly, his attorney says) the tragic shooting death of Birmingham firefighter Jordan Melton, gunned down last year at Birmingham Station 9. Melton was to testify as a witness in a trial in which Rollins was charged with killing Hoover father Eric Tyler Sledge, Jr. in 2021; Rollins was found not guilty.
So many lives lost. So many lives entangled. So much terror. All emanating from that singular thread, as far as we know now.
Someone’s still pulling.
I was raised by good people who encouraged me to be a good man and surround myself with good people. If I did, they said, good things would happen. I am a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, an Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.
