A wave of domestic violence has left an Alabama family shattered, with three relatives dead and another wounded in two separate shootings linked by grief and tragedy. The incidents, occurring within a week, culminated in a woman allegedly killing her uncle and great-uncle at a gathering following her cousin’s funeral, before also shooting her own sister.
The first shooting occurred in the early hours of Sunday, December 1, in Fairfield. Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call of a person down on Parkway Alley, where they discovered 29-year-old Jori Brown suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities swiftly identified a suspect in what they described as a domestic dispute.
By Monday, 27-year-old Alicia Brown was arrested and charged with murder in Jori Brown’s death. She is being held without bond at the Jefferson County Jail. Disturbingly, social media posts and a widely circulated mug shot showed the suspect smiling following her arrest, a detail that fueled public anguish as Jori’s family began to mourn.
The family’s grief was compounded just days later. On Saturday, December 6, relatives and friends gathered for Jori Brown’s funeral service. Attendees, some traveling from Tennessee, then convened for a post-funeral barbecue at an apartment complex on 20th Place in the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham.
What began as a family gathering descended into chaos late that night. Shortly before midnight, Birmingham police received reports of gunfire at the Tuxedo Terrace complex. Responding officers found two men fatally wounded and a woman injured from gunshots fired into an apartment.
The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office identified the victims as 43-year-old Sony Arrington of Clarksville, Tennessee, and 76-year-old Carlton Allen of Birmingham. The wounded woman, who survived, was later revealed to be the sister of the alleged shooter. Police took a suspect into custody approximately two hours after the shooting.
Authorities have since charged 35-year-old Jasmine Allen with two counts of capital murder for the deaths of Arrington and Allen, and one count of attempted murder for shooting her sister. Investigators confirmed the suspect is related to the victims, describing the violence as stemming from a family argument.
The connection between the two shootings is profound and tragic. Jasmine Allen is the niece of Sony Arrington and the great-niece of Carlton Allen. Furthermore, Jori Brown, whose funeral the family had just attended, was allegedly killed by another family member, Alicia Brown. This series of events paints a harrowing picture of internecine violence erupting amid shared mourning.
On social media, family members expressed shock and devastation, struggling to reconcile the allegations with their perceptions of the suspect. One relative described Jasmine Allen as “loving and family oriented” in public posts, while others alluded to deep-seated and long-running familial tensions that may have boiled over.
“It’s a lot of hurt behind all that,” one comment read, hinting at a complex and painful family history. Another post lamented a “long history” of discord, suggesting the violence did not occur in a vacuum. These online fragments point to a backdrop of trauma that allegedly culminated in the deadly confrontation.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and Birmingham Police Department continue their investigations into both shootings. As legal proceedings begin for both Alicia Brown and Jasmine Allen, a community and a family are left to grapple with an almost unimaginable sequence of loss, where the rituals of mourning have been violently usurped by further bloodshed.
