Mobile police are investigating a fatal shooting that left a woman dead and two of her adult children hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after gunfire erupted at a home in the 7600 block of Elm Circle, off Cottage Hill Road, late Wednesday night. According to the Mobile Police Department, officers were called to the scene at approximately 11:16 p.m. on August 12 in response to a reported shooting. When they arrived, they found a woman outside the home who had died from a gunshot wound. Inside the house, officers discovered a man and another woman suffering from life-threatening injuries. Both were transported to a local hospital for treatment.
Investigators said a preliminary investigation determined that a man known to the victims shot all three during what police described as a domestic altercation. Police have identified the man they are seeking as 30-year-old Devin Kelly, who is wanted for questioning in connection with a murder charge and two counts of attempted murder. Officials have cautioned that Kelly should be considered armed and dangerous, and they are asking the public for help locating him. As of Thursday, no arrests had been made in the case.
The neighborhood where the shooting occurred sits in the sprawling Cottage Hill Road corridor of western Mobile, one of the city’s most heavily trafficked east-west arteries, lined with subdivisions, apartment complexes, churches and commercial strips. Elm Circle is a residential street off that corridor, the kind of quiet neighborhood block where late-night police activity draws neighbors to porches and windows. The 11:16 p.m. call placed officers at the scene in the middle of the night, when emergency medical response times and scene security both become more complicated, and the discovery of victims both outside and inside the home required officers to secure the structure before medics could work.
Mobile police have not released further details about the relationship between Kelly and the victims, and the investigation remains active. Anyone with information about Kelly’s whereabouts or about the shooting is asked to contact the Mobile Police Department. Homicide investigators typically pursue such cases through family interviews, warrants for phone records, and coordination with other agencies that might encounter a wanted suspect, and an armed-and-dangerous designation means patrol officers are instructed to use caution and specialized units rather than approach alone.
A Family’s Loss Goes Public
Days after the shooting, a relative of the victims spoke publicly for the first time about the family’s loss. Kevin Gilchrist Jr. described the moment he received a phone call informing him that his family members had been shot, offering a personal account of the toll the attack has taken on those closest to the victims. The family’s identities beyond Gilchrist have not been publicly released, and police have not disclosed the ages or full names of the surviving victims. That restraint is common in the early days of an active investigation, when investigators are still working to confirm relationships, notify relatives and protect the integrity of witness statements.
Domestic violence cases occupy a distinctive and difficult place in American policing, and the Elm Circle shooting carries the markers investigators watch for most closely. When the suspect is known to the victims, when the violence erupts inside a family home, and when multiple family members are targeted in a single episode, the case moves into a category that research has consistently identified as among the most dangerous situations officers respond to. Mobile police have not detailed any prior calls to the residence or any earlier contact between Kelly and the victims, and officials generally withhold such details while an investigation and any future prosecution are underway.
For the wider Cottage Hill Road area, the case arrived amid continuing public attention to gun violence in Mobile’s residential neighborhoods. The department has emphasized community tips as its most productive investigative tool in cases like this one, where the suspect is known by name but has not been located. Wanted-person alerts circulated by the department typically spread through local news coverage and social media, and investigators have repeatedly credited public tips — often from people who recognize a suspect from a published photograph — with shortening manhunts that might otherwise stretch for weeks.
South AL News will continue to follow developments in the investigation as police work to locate Kelly and gather additional information about what led to the shooting. The charges attached to a wanted suspect frequently evolve as evidence develops, and a murder charge paired with two counts of attempted murder reflects the preliminary assessment that all three victims’ injuries trace to the same episode. Prosecutors with the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office would formally present the case to a grand jury after an arrest, a process that in Mobile County typically follows within weeks of a warrant being issued.
Resources for Families and Domestic Violence Victims
Advocates in the Mobile area note that episodes of family violence rarely arrive without warning signs, and the region maintains a network of crisis resources for households where tensions have escalated. The Penelope House, based in Mobile, operates a 24-hour crisis line and shelter services for domestic violence victims across the region, and the Alabama statewide hotline connects callers to local programs around the clock. Law enforcement agencies across the state also connect victims to protective order processes through the courts, which can establish legal distance between a threatened person and the individual they fear.
Those resources exist in part because of the recognition — repeated in studies cited by prosecutors and victim advocates — that separation and its aftermath are among the most dangerous periods in an abusive relationship. Nothing in the Mobile Police Department’s public statements has characterized the history between Kelly and the victims, and residents should be careful not to draw conclusions about the family’s circumstances from the fact that a domestic altercation has been cited. What the case does confirm is the pattern that advocates describe: violence inside a family home, inflicted by someone the victims knew, with the damage spreading across generations of a single family in one night.
The Search Continues
The manhunt for Kelly remained open as of Thursday, with no arrests reported in the case. Fugitive searches of this kind typically involve coordination among the department’s Major Crimes Unit, patrol divisions and, when credible sightings emerge, other law enforcement agencies across the Gulf Coast. A suspect with family or social ties to a community can remain at large for an extended period precisely because the people around him may be reluctant to come forward, which is why investigators pair every public appeal with reminders that tips can be left anonymously through Crime Stoppers, which pays rewards for information that leads to an arrest.
The Elm Circle shooting stands as the kind of case that reshapes a neighborhood’s sense of safety. Residents of the 7600 block woke to police tape and crime scene units the morning after the gunfire, and for families on the street the investigation’s details — the relationship, the motive, the whereabouts of the suspect — will remain topics of conversation until arrests and court proceedings fill in the blanks. For now, the facts established by police are limited but stark: three members of one family shot in their own home late on a Wednesday night, a mother dead, her two adult children fighting to recover, and a 30-year-old man known to all three still sought on a murder charge.
Anyone with information about Devin Kelly’s location, or about the events at the Elm Circle home, is asked to contact the Mobile Police Department directly or to leave an anonymous tip through Mobile Area Crime Stoppers. Officials continue to caution that Kelly should be considered armed and dangerous, and that members of the public should not attempt to approach or apprehend him themselves. Updates in the case will depend on the investigation’s progress, and additional information about the victims’ conditions has not been released since the initial reports that both were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
The outcome of the hospital treatment for the two surviving victims has not been publicly updated beyond the initial reports, and their conditions will likely figure in any eventual court proceedings. In Alabama, attempted murder charges can stand regardless of whether the victims ultimately recover, and prosecutors weighing the case will have access to the full record of the investigation, including forensic evidence from the scene, statements from relatives and neighbors, and the account of the events that investigators assembled in the first hours after the shooting. Cases built on domestic violence evidence also often include years of documented history, and Mobile County prosecutors have specialized units that handle these prosecutions from arraignment through trial.
For now, the community response continues along the lines that Mobile residents know from similar cases: law enforcement asking for tips, relatives grieving in public view, and neighbors waiting for answers. The intersection of those threads will define the case in the weeks ahead, as investigators work to bring the search for Devin Kelly to an end and the family that lost a mother on Elm Circle begins the long process that follows any violent loss.
