A late night at Waffle House turned into a deadly night at Waffle House when an individual at a Waffle House in Birmingham, Alabama, started making murderous threats directed toward a number of patrons of the restaurant, leading to a man present at the scene to draw his firearm and shoot the man making the threats.
Apparently, the incident occurred at about 1:30 in the morning on December 17, 2023. Sheriff’s deputies had already been dispatched to the scene before the shooting occurred, as they were called and help from them was requested when the man began making threats to shoot patrons.
However, Jefferson County sheriff’s Lt. Joni Money said, before those dispatched deputies made it to the scene and dealt with the situation, it escalated into an altercation between the man making the threats and a patron. That patron shot the threatening individual, Lt. Money said, and then left the Waffle House.
Describing the aftermath of the incident, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said that it has conducted a thorough investigation of the shooting, but the DA’s office has not yet made a decision about whether to charge the shooter. It said, “Detectives with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a thorough investigation of the December 17th shooting death that occurred in the 2200 block of Centerpoint Parkway. The evidence was presented to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office, who has not yet determined the charging decision.”
Giving a few details on the shooting and the man who was making serious threats and shot for them, the JCSO added, “Cristall Terrell Hereford, a 26-year-old from Huntsville, was shot to death outside of the business around 1:30 AM, Sunday morning. According to witnesses, Hereford was threatening to shoot patrons in the parking lot, when one of them produced a firearm, shooting and killing Hereford. No weapon was recovered from Hereford at the scene.”
Then, the sheriff’s office claimed that it had found and briefly detained the suspect in the shooting, writing, “A shooting subject was located by detectives and briefly taken into custody during the investigation but has since been released pending the course of action to be determined by the District Attorney’s Office.“
AL.com noted that the incident capped a bloody weekend for Birmingham, with three people killed on Saturday alone. Then, it reports, one person was killed at a restaurant called Pita Stop, another near a food truck, and the third inside a home. Altogether, that marked 183 homicides for Jefferson County, in which Birmingham sits, so far in 2023.
Alabama became a constitutional carry state on January 1, 2023. Now, pistol permits are no longer required for carrying a concealed handgun. Rather, any law-abiding Alabama resident or other law-abiding citizen in Alabama, regardless of the state of residence for that individual, who is at least 19 years old or older and legally permitted to carry a firearm will no longer be required to obtain a permit in order to carry a concealed pistol.
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