The Birmingham Times
A shooting near Woodlawn High School left a teen dead.
According to Birmingham police, 17-year-old Gerald Andre Lomax Jr. and a friend were leaving a basketball game around 9:50 p.m.
Lomax was rushed to UAB Hospital where he died Wednesday afternoon after being taken off of life support.
His football coach Joe Webb said Lomax was at the game to support his friends but Birmingham investigators said as he was leaving he got into an argument.
Lomax and his friend attempted to leave the location, 54th Street and 2nd Avenue N, when an unknown suspect fired multiple shots into their car. Lomax, riding in the passenger seat, was shot, and the driver took him to Woodlawn High School for help.
“They brought him back to the school to get help,” Birmingham City Schools board member Jason Meadows said Wednesday. “They knew that we have, like, resource officers that, there’s police presence in the front of the school.”
“Please talk to your children,” Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Mark Sullivan said Wednesday in a video released by BCS. “We have excellent counselors in the Birmingham school system to help them with anything they may be experiencing.
“We want to help them to learn to navigate conflicts by using resolution skills in hopes that it will avoid the loss of life in our schools and in our city,” he added. “Violence in our community impacts everyone.”
Watch the full statement from the Birmingham City Schools Superintendent here.
The loss hit the Jackson-Olin family from staff to students, hard, as Meadows said he was a teen with a bright future.
“They are there taking it hard like the cheerleaders and the football team,” said Meadows “It’s devastating when you have someone who was doing the right things, who was a favorite of the administration, a favorite of his peers. And yet this happens.”
No one is in custody at this time.
