Man arrested after police chase on I-59 convicted of shooting teenager at Bessemer hotel

A Jefferson County man has been convicted of murder in the 2021 murder of a teenager found murdered at a Comfort Inn in Bessemer.

A Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff jury found 22-year-old Tyriq McCall guilty of murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Orlando Keith Williams Jr.

McCall’s trial began on November 18. On Monday, the jury returned a guilty verdict.

Jefferson County District Judge David Carpenter presided over the hearing. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

McCall was also charged in a 2022 police chase and crash on Interstate 59 that seriously injured a Homewood police officer.

He was wanted at the time for failure to appear on an arrest warrant in connection with Williams’ death and was charged with attempted escape and second-degree receiving stolen property after a pursuit.

These newer allegations have not yet been resolved.

McCall also faces a civil lawsuit filed by a Homewood officer injured in the crash.

Williams was shot and killed in a hotel at 11:03 p.m. on Saturday, April 10, 2021. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:32 p.m

Williams’ mother, April Chaney, she spoke to AL.com the day after her son’s death.

She said she was heartbroken and believed he was set up to die after months of an ongoing dispute in which two other young men were killed and multiple shots were fired in the Bessemer area.

“Half the kids that were in that room grew up outside my mom’s front door. They set up my baby. They played with him,” Chaney said in that interview.

“I treated them like my children and they stole my child’s life.”

Williams was one of several people injured in October 2020 when his friend, 18-year-old Mikel Cooper, a senior at Bessemer City High School, was fatally shot.

The shooting occurred on Monday, October 26, at 5:15 p.m., at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 15th Street North in Bessemer.

Cooper died at the scene and three other teenagers, including a 16-year-old suspect, were injured in the gun exchange. Williams was shot, as was a 13-year-old boy.

The fatal shooting was followed by at least five other shootings that police say are in retaliation for Cooper’s killing.

In one of these shootings, one person – a grandmother – was injured. This occurred in both Bessemer and Brighton.

Chaney said her son went to the Comfort Inn to gamble. “They knew he loved gambling. That was his weakness,” she said. “I said, ‘Why are you hanging out with them? They don’t mean anything good. He said, “Mom, I won’t let them kill me.”

Chaney said she called her son shortly before 11 p.m. “I heard scuffling and then the phone rang,” she said. “I called and he didn’t pick up. Then my sister called me and said, “Go to the Comfort Inn.” “Your son was shot.”

Three other people have been charged with Williams’ murder. Court records show that charges against one of the suspects were dismissed.

The other two suspects were 16 years old at the time, so efforts to determine the outcome of their cases were unsuccessful.