GRAYSVILLE, Ala. (WIAT) – The family of retired U.S. Army Ranger and Purple Heart recipient Dimetri Phillips wants answers.
Graysville police said the 30-year-old father was shot and killed inside his vehicle at a stop sign last November. Family members and police held a joint news conference Friday asking anyone with information about the case to come forward.
“You know who it is. You know who it was,” said Lenathalie Seamon, Dimetri Phillips’ mother. “Please come closer. Please, I’m begging you. Please come closer.”
Graysville police said Seamon’s only son was shot and killed between 6:20 and 6:45 p.m. on Nov. 26. With no one arrested, the family is asking for information about his shooting death.
“He can go serve his country, get a Purple Heart and come back and be killed right here where he lives,” Seamon said. “It’s unthinkable.”
The family said Phillips was dropping off her two-year-old daughter with the girl’s mother at a BP gas station and had turned left onto Main Street and stopped at the stop sign. Police said he was the second car waiting to turn onto Highway 78 when the suspect vehicle pulled up next to him.
“A red sedan pulled up next to him, opened fire and then took off down 78 toward I-22,” Graysville Police Department Lt. Erick Burpo said.
Police described the vehicle as a small red or maroon sedan with a yellow, white and green parking sticker on the rear. They believe there may have been two men inside that car heading to Birmingham.
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In addition to serving in the U.S. Army, Phillips graduated from Miles College. Laurie Hackney, who worked in the university library, described her best friend
“Infinite energy, very loyal, like all of us,” Hackney said. “If the situation were reversed, he would be up here. He deserves to be here with us and he is not.”
His family hopes someone will have the courage to come forward with additional information that will lead to an arrest.
“It would bring closure, but it still wouldn’t eliminate the void,” Seamon said. “The smiling Dimetri, the only one, the person who is not there. He is no longer here with us and he will no longer be here with us.”
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact the Graysville Police Department at 205-514-6634 or submit an anonymous tip by calling Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
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