Jabari Latrell Peoples is described by his parents as a college student who “wanted to do too many things,” and was “dedicated to all his friends and all his family.”
But it has been more than two weeks since his parents last heard his voice. The 18-year-old was killed by a Homewood, Alabama, police officer.
The teen was shot in the back, according to an independent preliminary autopsy report released by his family on July 15.
In the weeks since Peoples’ death, his family members have held candlelight vigils, launched a fundraising effort, and released a statement to address what they believe are inconsistencies in the account provided by police. The family said he wasn’t armed, didn’t resist arrest, and the officer who fatally shot him took no life-saving action. The police said he was armed, resisted arrest, and the officer fired in compliance with the law.
The family’s civil rights attorney, Black Lives Matter Grassroots in Birmingham and two Homewood City Council members, are demanding accountability and transparency as officials with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency investigate Peoples’ death.
“We’re going to be fighting the courts here in Alabama, fighting for Jabari every single day here in the trenches,” said the family’s lawyer, Leroy Maxwell. Nationally known civil rights attorney Ben Crump is joining the legal team, and they hope to increase pressure on the Alabama courts, said Maxwell at a July 8 livestreamed press conference at Friendship Baptist Church in Homewood.
The precise sequence of events on June 23 that led to the fatal shooting remains unclear.
“I feel so lost not to be able to tell this family what happened to their child,” Crump said at a livestreamed press conference on July 15 at the church. “It has been three weeks; how long will they have to wait to see the video?”
Peoples became one of at least 126 Black people to date killed following an encounter with police in the U.S. this year, according to the Mapping Police Violence database. The only public account of what happened to Peoples came from the Homewood Police Department and was released two days after the shooting.
“Nothing further is available as the investigation remains ongoing. Once complete, the findings will be turned over to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office,” wrote the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency in a July 1 press release.
The fight for answers intensified for Peoples’ parents — Vivian Sterling and William Peoples — after they were denied access to view police body camera footage. They said they still do not know the name of the officer who fatally shot their ambitious son, who was the youngest of five siblings.
Authorities also refused to give his parents his personal belongings, his parents said.
Although the family has petitioned the courts for body camera footage and other details, the early stages of the police investigation may delay their efforts. Under state law, only the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is authorized to release the footage, according to a press release.
“We don’t know how we are going to go on without Jabari, but we are going to fight for Jabari,” Williams Peoples said at the press conference. After he spoke, a round of applause and cheers erupted from the pews.
Eric Hall, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Grassroots in Birmingham, said the family met with members of the NAACP. Hall said the civil rights organization plans to involve federal authorities in the case.
“The video would tell us if he had a gun or not”
Often shaking her head, Sterling listed the professional goals her son once shared with her: He wanted to go to the military, become a pilot, and then a detective.
“He had a lot of dreams and was willing to work for those dreams,” she said at the family’s press conference. As she spoke from the pulpit, she was embraced by her son’s father, who stood to her left.
“Sometimes, I thought he wanted to do too many things,” she said.
Anything he saw, he wanted to achieve, Sterling said with a tearful grin, gentle laughter filling the church during the family’s press conference as she retold anecdotes.
At the time of his death, Jabari Peoples had transferred to a community college from Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, where he studied information technology. He was also working at a hospital in Tuscaloosa as a security guard, Hall told Capital B.
Read More: What Police Say Vs. What They Do on Tape
In a press release, police said, “The details surrounding this incident are clearly captured on the officer’s body-worn camera.” But the account has been challenged by Peoples’ family and advocates, who said that he wasn’t armed and was on a date with his girlfriend before she left for college the next day.
On June 23 at about 9:30 p.m., authorities said, a uniformed Homewood police officer approached Peoples as he sat in the driver’s seat of a parked car with a young woman, who advocates said was his girlfriend.
The car was in a soccer complex parking lot when police said the unidentified officer caught a whiff of marijuana, and ordered Peoples and the woman out of the car. Police allege that a firearm was spotted in the car door and Peoples resisted arrest before the officer was knocked to the ground.
“Mr. Peoples broke away from the officer and retrieved the handgun from the open driver’s side door pocket, creating an immediate deadly threat to the officer,” according to police. The officer fired one round “from his service weapon to defend himself, in accordance with Alabama state law,” authorities said.
Police said Peoples fell to the ground while allegedly still holding a handgun. He died at a nearby hospital. As the officer called for backup, the woman fled into the woods, authorities said. She later returned to the scene after the shooting.
Without viewing unedited and unredacted footage, his parents and their legal team have been left with more questions than answers.
“The video would tell us if he had a gun or not,” said Crump at the Friendship Baptist Church press conference. “This is so unfair to the family” not allowing them to see the full video of their son’s last moments alive.
After the fatal shooting, Homewood police requested the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to take over the investigation. The release of any information about Peoples’ death is now the agency’s responsibility.
“Oftentimes, when police have videos of people in our community commit[ting] a crime or doing something wrong, they put that video out immediately — immediately,” Crump said to a crowd that filled the church with cheers. “Why is it we have to wait, if the police does something wrong? You gotta not wait. We gotta make sure we give them an opportunity to come up with a narrative to try to justify what we’re going to see on the video.”
“No,” Crump added. “It should be equal justice.”
A public viewing is scheduled for July 11 at Lavender’s Funeral Services in the college student’s home of Aliceville, according to Peoples’ obituary and his family’s website.
On July 12, the website said the 18-year-old’s casket will be driven through his hometown for his “last ride.”
“There are serious issues in Homewood”
Cara McClure, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Grassroots in Birmingham, is a lifelong resident of Homewood. She said she still worries about her now 31-year-old son when he has to drive through three cities in Jefferson County — Homewood, Hoover, and Hueytown.
“I am traumatized when my son drives through Homewood or Hoover,” said McClure. “But all of my life, we always say, ‘You don’t go over there or don’t drive through Homewood or make sure you have everything together when you go to Homewood and Hoover.’”
Hall, 43, echoed a similar experience during the year he lived in Homewood. Originally from Flint, Michigan, he said he often took back roads to avoid “aggressive” police traffic points on main streets.
A 2019 lawsuit over alleged excessive force by two Homewood officers during a traffic stop was dismissed after the department said the officers were protected by official immunity.
“There has never been a time that I know of where we didn’t warn our kids, [tell them] not to travel through Homewood,” said McClure, 55. Homewood is nearly 70% white.
On the afternoon of July 8, a rally was held by Black Lives Matter Grassroots outside of Homewood’s City Hall to raise awareness about Jabari Peoples’ case. Attendees held “Black Lives Matter” signs and photographs of him alongside words calling for justice.
The rally was led by Hall, McClure, and Wayne Taft Harris Jr., a local clergyman who handles communications for the grassroots organization. On social media, group members asked the community “to stand with us in the name of truth, justice, and accountability.”
During a July 9 interview with Capital B, Hall said that residents of all races and ethnicities in a Southern state like Alabama must “fight for police accountability.”
“You gotta understand. This is Alabama. We live in one of, if not, the reddest states,” Hall said. “This is the home of the Confederacy, and it’s still there to this day, and it reflects in the policies that exist in Alabama.”
Hall was referring to a bill enacted in May that expanded police immunity protections when accused of wrongdoing.
There was a legislative effort aimed at expediting the release of police body-worn and dash camera footage that stalled in the Alabama state Senate in April 2024. The bill would have required that footage be made available to victims’ families and the public within 30 days.
Since 2013, when the Mapping Police Violence database began tracking fatal police encounters, 277 people have been killed in Alabama following interactions with law enforcement — 99 of them were Black. Seventeen of those killings were in Jefferson County, where Peoples was killed. According to an analysis of the database, one case resulted in charges against an officer, who was off-duty at the time of the 2020 homicide.
Hall said members of Black Lives Matter Grassroots’ Birmingham chapter are urging investigators to take a second look several other cases that are not reflected on the Mapping Police Violence database. He also said there are a series of lawsuits that claim Homewood city employees who are Black face discrimination in agencies, such as the police and fire departments.
“There are serious issues in Homewood,” he said.
This story has been updated.