Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

The shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Cook, the federal budget shutdown, and the selection of American Robert Prevost as Pope Leo the fourteenth back in May were among the Associated Press’ biggest stories of 2025, in Alabama and around the nation.

A Brown University sophomore who was killed in an attack at the Rhode Island university was remembered Monday as “smart, confident, curious, kind, principled, brave,” at a funeral in her home state of Alabama. Hundreds gathered at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown Birmingham to remember Ella Cook, 19.

Investigators in the shooting that killed an Alabama college student are talking about the high tech tip that blew the case wide open. Gunman Claudio Neves Valente is believed to be the shooter at Brown University who left sophomore Ella Cook of Mountain Brook dead.

A frantic search for the suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University ended at a New Hampshire storage facility where authorities discovered the man dead inside and then revealed he also was suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Alabama college sophomore Ella Cook was one of the two fatalities at the Brown shooting.

Authorities have asked the public for any footage they might have of the gunman who fatally shot two students and wounded nine others at Brown University, even as they released a new video timeline and a slightly clearer image of a possible suspect. The shooter killed sophomore Ella Cook, of Mountain Brook, as well as another student. Nine others were wounded.

A third person was arrested and charged Thursday in connection with a shooting that killed two people and injured 12 others in a crowded downtown nightlife district in Alabama’s capital city in early October, police said.

A second person has been charged with murder in connection with a shooting that killed two people and injured 12 others in a crowded downtown nightlife district in Alabama’s capital city in early October, police said. Montgomery police announced that Dantavious McGhee, 19, was arrested a day earlier and charged with one count of capital murder, nine counts of assault in the first degree and three counts of assault in the second degree.

No one had been arrested as of Sunday afternoon following a mass shooting in downtown Montgomery. Police appealed to the public for information and sorted through a complicated crime scene that involved multiple people firing weapons in a crowd just after the Tuskegee University-Morehouse College rivalry football game ended blocks away.

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed Wednesday at a Utah college event. A person of interest was in custody, officials said. “My heart is breaking at the devastating news of Charlie Kirk’s death,” said ALGOP Chairman John Wahl.

An Alabama police chief announced plans to retire, just over a month after a mass shooting renewed scrutiny of the department's efforts to quell surging gun violence and homicides.