A Mobile family is grieving after a 23-year-old man was shot and killed on Thanksgiving night, just over a year after he survived being shot multiple times in an earlier, unrelated incident.
Antonio Lacy was killed the evening of Thanksgiving Day, not long after finishing dinner with family, according to relatives. Mobile police say he was shot at least 10 times in the attack, which occurred in the days following what family members described as an earlier attempt on his life just days before.
Lacy’s father told reporters that he had grown concerned for his son’s safety earlier that week after learning someone had shot at him the previous Sunday. He said he spent hours on Thanksgiving looking for his son, hoping to convince him to stay somewhere safer, but was unable to reach him before the fatal shooting occurred.
Family members held a visitation for Lacy at a Mobile funeral home on Broad Street, with funeral and burial services following the next day. Relatives and friends who attended the service described Lacy as someone with an easygoing personality who had been working to turn his life around after a difficult stretch of years.
The shooting was not the first close call for the young father of two. According to family members, Lacy nearly died in 2013 after being shot 10 times in a separate incident that occurred shortly after his release from custody. Court records show he had pleaded guilty to several charges in prior years, including burglary, theft and escape.
Family members said Lacy had lost his mother the year before his death and had been working to build a more stable life for himself and his children in the months leading up to the Thanksgiving shooting. Relatives said they had hoped his survival of the earlier 2013 shooting would serve as a turning point.
Mobile police have not announced an arrest in connection with the Thanksgiving killing. The case remains part of a broader pattern of violent crime that has affected families across the city’s Michigan Avenue area and other Mobile neighborhoods in recent years, prompting continued calls from residents and community leaders for expanded intervention programs aimed at young men caught in cycles of violence.
Anyone with information about the shooting was asked to contact Mobile police or Crime Stoppers.