Photo courtesy of Hoover Police Department
Oscar Lee Woods III
Oscar Lee Woods III
The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force on Thursday arrested a 28-year-old Memphis man who has been charged with capital murder in the May 11 shooting death of a 22-year-old Hoover man.
Tavarius Jamal Bryant was shot to death outside his apartment at The Cliffs at Rocky Ridge complex in Hoover at 3:38 a.m. on May 11. Hoover police say two Memphis men were robbing Bryant when gunfire was exchanged.
Tavarius Bryant was struck and died on the scene. About 90 minutes later, two females dropped off 25-year-old Christopher Bryant of Memphis (no relation to Tavarius Bryant) at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham with a gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Police immediately suspected a link between the two deaths and began investigating. The two women who dropped off Christopher Bryant at the hospital in Birmingham left the hospital without providing any information, but a witness was able to provide a tag number for the vehicle they were driving, and detectives were able to link that vehicle and evidence left at the Hoover crime scene to a second suspect, Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said in a press release.
Hoover detectives on May 23 obtained a warrant for the arrest of 28-year-old Oscar Lee Woods III of Memphis. He was charged with capital murder in the death of Tavarius Bryant and felony murder in the death of his alleged accomplice, Christopher Bryant.
Alabama law allows a person to be charged with felony murder if, during the commission of a felony crime, one of the participants in the crime is killed.
The warrant was turned over to the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, which arrested Woods at 7:05 p.m. Thursday in Vaiden, Mississippi.
Woods was being held without bond today in the Carroll Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility in Carroll County, Mississippi, awaiting extradition to the Jefferson County Jail in Alabama.
Hoover police said they want to thank the Birmingham and Memphis police departments, the Birmingham and Memphis field offices of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office in Mississippi for assistance with the case.
The deaths of the two Bryants were the first two homicides in Hoover this year.
