Post by Scumhunter on Jun 27, 2019 2:27:56 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: wvua23.com)
From tuscaloosanews.com:
The group of teenagers who found Scotty Cockrell’s body had been planning to spend the day hanging out at Lake Tuscaloosa.
It was 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday when the group stopped at the Cockrell home in Biscayne Hills, a quiet, middle-class neighborhood off U.S. Highway 43 North not far from McFarland Boulevard. The friends would later tell police that they noticed the carport door had been kicked in, and thought their friend might be playing a joke when they found him lying across the bed in his room down the hall. He had been shot.
Ten years have passed, and police still don’t know why someone wanted the 17-year-old dead, but investigators do believe he was targeted.
The investigators say they’ve pursued hundreds of leads, and feel they could get a break if they can find out more about a white car that had been seen in the area.
“Somebody knows something and they’re scared to death to say anything,” said Larrah Craig, one of Cockrell’s two older sisters. “They’re either scared of the person who did it or scared that they’ll be arrested too, and I can’t blame them. I just want them to know that there is a family and friends that are still involved in this. We have to live with it day in and day out.”
Several neighbors told police that they had seen a late 1990s model white Ford Escort with chrome or fake rims and a Jefferson County tag circling the neighborhood during the weeks and days before the killing. Four people were in the car each time: a black male driver, a white male passenger and two passengers in the back seat. The men in the front seat were in their late teens or early 20s.
“We believe finding the occupants of the white Escort may be a crucial piece in solving this crime,” said Lt. Kip Hart, Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit assistant commander. “We hope that by putting this out there to the public, new information can come in that will allow us to work toward closing this case and arresting whoever is responsible.”
Ellen Cockrell told police that she last saw her son as she left for work at 7:30 a.m. June 22. Friends had last spoken to him by phone around 1:30 a.m.
Craig said that the 10th anniversary of her brother’s death today will be difficult, but she’s glad that the public and police still seem interested in a resolution.
“I haven’t lost hope,” she said. “I’ll still do what I can, and I want people to know that our family hasn’t forgotten.”
Family members and police have both said that Cockrell wasn’t involved in drugs or any type of criminal behavior that would make him an obvious target. After he was killed, people in the neighborhood described him as a good kid, who sometimes skateboarded on the street in front of his house.
He had been involved in the annual Fright Factory fund-raiser for United Cerebral Palsy of West Alabama, which was dedicated to his memory after he died.
Craig and some other family members plan to visit a cousin and his family in Virginia this week. Scotty had planned to visit that cousin the summer he was killed and hike part of the nearby Appalachian Trial, she said.
Scotty was adventurous, she said, and wanted to backpack across Europe after the two remaining years he would have Tuscaloosa County High School. Craig is now planning to make that trip herself next year.
She thinks of her brother on holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, but said that his memory often comes to her in quieter moments. She recently started a full-time photography business in Mobile and has an 18-month-old son. Scotty would be an uncle nearing 30 years old had he lived, perhaps with kids of his own.
“I was sitting her with my son and out of nowhere, I wanted to share that with my brother,” Craig said. “It’s the small moments that are hard.”
Like the police, Craig is hopeful that someone will come forward.
“Maybe someone knows something and it’s been laying dormant in the back of their mind,” she said. “I just hope someone will say something, because we’re not going to forget.”
Anyone with information can the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit at 205-752-0616 or Crime Stoppers at 205-752-STOP (7867). Callers can remain anonymous.
www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20180622/scotty-cockrell-murder-case-remains-unsolved-12-years-later
Thoughts? It should be noted that the above article is from 2016 but In Pursuit with John Walsh's Facebook page posted a few days ago about Scotty's case unfortunately still being unsolved (see the show's June 24th, 2019 status updates). I am placing Scotty's case in the Unsolved on TV section because of the In Pursuit publicity.
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