Court records say Bonita Yvette Brown told investigators she shot Thomas Williams after he ended their relationship during a meeting in a park.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A Jefferson County grand jury has indicted an Alabama woman on a murder charge in the shooting death of her boyfriend, nearly a year after investigators said she acknowledged firing three shots when he ended their relationship during a meeting in a Birmingham park.

Bonita Yvette Brown, who was 64 when she was arrested in November 2025, is accused of killing 64-year-old Thomas Williams, a U.S. Army veteran, in Birmingham’s Powderly community. Brown remains accused and has not been convicted of the charge. The indictment moves the prosecution beyond its initial arrest and preliminary stages and leaves the allegations to be resolved through the criminal court process.

The investigation began on Sunday, Nov. 23, 2025, when someone in the neighborhood found Williams unresponsive near a dead-end street and called 911. Birmingham police said officers responded at about 2 p.m. and found Williams in the roadway around 17th Street Southwest, Laurel Avenue and Maple Avenue. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service personnel pronounced him dead at the scene. Police treated the death as a homicide after determining that Williams had suffered gunshot wounds. Brown was arrested the next day in Birmingham and initially taken into custody on a murder charge.

The condition of the scene gave investigators important questions to answer. Williams’ cellphone was not with him, and detectives found no spent shell casings nearby, according to court-record reporting. Investigators therefore turned in part to digital records to reconstruct his movements and contacts before his death. Phone records and information from Williams’ smartwatch showed that he had been communicating with a number that investigators connected to Brown shortly before the shooting, authorities said. Automated license-plate cameras also recorded a vehicle associated with Brown traveling in the area around the relevant period.

Those records helped detectives focus on Brown, who acknowledged during questioning that the telephone number and vehicle identified by investigators were hers, according to accounts of the court proceedings. Birmingham homicide Detective James Vildibill later testified about the investigation during Brown’s early court proceedings. Authorities said Brown told investigators that she and Williams had been dating and had arranged to meet at a park for a sexual encounter. The meeting and what happened afterward are central to the murder allegation against her.

Jefferson County District Judge Tiara Y. Hudson summarized Brown’s alleged statement in a bond order. The judge wrote that Brown told police Williams ended their relationship immediately after the encounter and that she then “snapped” and shot him three times. The statement is an allegation contained in the court record, not a finding of guilt. Prosecutors would still have to prove the murder charge beyond a reasonable doubt if the case proceeds to trial, and Brown would be able to challenge the state’s evidence and the circumstances surrounding any statement attributed to her.

Investigators also allege Brown described what she did after the shooting. Court records cited in local reporting say she told detectives she took Williams’ cellphone and later discarded it near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. She then went to a grocery store before returning home, according to those accounts. Brown also directed investigators to the firearm and spent shell casings, which authorities said were recovered from her home. That evidence, combined with the electronic records and surveillance information, became part of the prosecution’s account of the case.

Brown’s pretrial custody became a separate issue soon after her arrest. Prosecutors sought to keep her jailed without bond under Alabama’s pretrial-detention rules, arguing at a December 2025 hearing that the circumstances of the homicide allegation justified detention. Alabama law allows judges to deny bail in murder cases and several other serious offenses when the required legal showing is made. The law does not make detention automatic merely because a qualifying charge has been filed. A judge must consider whether release conditions can reasonably address public-safety concerns and ensure that the defendant returns to court.

Brown’s attorney, Mike Shores, argued that she should be released while the case was pending. The defense pointed to her lack of a prior criminal record, health problems and her role as a primary caregiver for her daughter. Hudson declined the prosecution’s request to hold Brown without bond, finding that the state had not established that no set of release conditions could reasonably protect the public or assure Brown’s appearance in court. The judge set bond at $100,000 and imposed restrictions that included a prohibition on firearm possession and continuing court-ordered supervision.

The ruling on bond did not determine whether Brown committed murder. Pretrial detention proceedings address whether an accused person should remain jailed while the criminal case is pending, while an indictment is a grand jury’s determination that sufficient grounds exist for the prosecution to continue. Neither procedure carries the same standard as a criminal conviction. The allegations involving Brown’s statement, the firearm, shell casings, digital records and vehicle-camera evidence remain evidence for the judicial process to evaluate.

The timeline reported after the killing also requires care because one later local story listed Nov. 3, 2025, as the date Williams was found. Contemporaneous reporting from the weekend of the homicide, the initial arrest coverage and later accounts identifying the incident as occurring on Sunday, Nov. 23, support Nov. 23 as the date of Williams’ death. Police announced Brown’s arrest after the shooting, and the case proceeded through preliminary hearings before the later grand jury indictment.

For Williams’ family, the indictment represents another stage in a case that began with a passerby finding him in a Birmingham roadway. For prosecutors and the defense, the next phase centers on evidence that has not yet been tested before a trial jury. Public reporting has described Brown’s alleged confession and the investigative trail in considerable detail, but no trial verdict has established the prosecution’s account as fact.

Brown remained free on the $100,000 bond when the indictment was reported in September 2026. No final disposition of the murder charge was identified in the records and reporting reviewed for this article. Unless the case is resolved through another lawful proceeding, prosecutors would have to establish Brown’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, and she retains the presumption of innocence while the charge remains pending.

Author note: Last updated Oct. 21, 2026.