Worker Shot Dead at Daphne Dirt Pit After Dispute; Murder Suspect Sought

A dispute between two contract workers at a Baldwin County dirt pit ended with one man dead and another charged, in absentia, with murder, according to the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office. The shooting at the Friendship Materials LLC operation on Friendship Road in Daphne transformed a quiet industrial site off the city’s residential corridors into a crime scene, and it launched a manhunt that stretched across Mobile Bay into the city of Mobile.

Deputies responded to the dirt pit shortly before 10 a.m. June 16 after a report of shots fired. They found 45-year-old Yaphet Hunter of Chunchula suffering from gunshot wounds. An air ambulance was called, but Hunter died at the scene, leaving deputies to piece together what had happened from witnesses, security footage and the accounts of the workers who watched the confrontation unfold.

Dispute Between Employees

Capt. Clint Cadenhead said the shooting stemmed from some sort of altercation between the two employees, and that one of the men pulled a gun and shot the other. Investigators described it as an isolated incident between the two workers and said they do not believe anyone living nearby was ever in danger, a determination that distinguished the case from the random-vehicle-shooting scares that have unsettled other parts of the coastal counties.

The entire episode was captured by security cameras at the business, and deputies said there were several witnesses. The combination gave investigators an unusually complete record of a workplace shooting, though officials declined to detail what the footage showed while the search for the shooter was underway. What the cameras and witnesses established, according to the sheriff’s office, was that the violence began and ended between the two men, and that no third party was involved.

The sound of the shooting carried beyond the property line. A neighbor told reporters she heard about six shots before emergency vehicles began arriving, her account matching the rapid sequence of a close-quarters confrontation. The timing of the call, the response of deputies and the arrival of the air ambulance all occurred within a compressed window on a weekday morning, when the pit would have been operating with its normal crew of contract workers.

Colby Cooper of Friendship Materials issued a statement mourning “the loss of life that occurred today because of a heinous act” at the facility and thanking first responders. The statement from the company struck the tone of an operator shaken by violence at its own site, expressing condolences to Hunter’s family while crediting the deputies, medics and helicopter crew who responded to the rural-industrial property within minutes of the first call.

Dirt pits and material yards are fixtures of Baldwin County’s growth economy, supplying the fill dirt, sand and gravel that the county’s rapid residential and commercial construction consumes year after year. The sites are typically staffed by small crews of contract workers operating heavy equipment across sprawling open acreage, far from the sight lines of the roads around them, which is part of why the presence of security cameras at the Friendship Road operation proved so consequential to the investigation.

Search for the Suspect

The suspect, identified as Marcus Stallworth, fled after the shooting and was last seen in downtown Mobile, where deputies said he was dropped off. He remains wanted for murder and may be armed with a handgun, according to the Sheriff’s Office, which noted he is known to frequent the Maryvale area of Mobile and Prichard. The crossing into Mobile County added the resources of two additional law enforcement agencies to the pursuit, as Baldwin County investigators tracked a suspect moving through neighborhoods on the west side of the bay.

U.S. Marshals and Mobile police later searched what was believed to be Stallworth’s last known address on Polk Street, but he was not located. The involvement of the Marshals Service reflected the standard practice for violent fugitives who cross county lines, with federal deputy marshals joining local officers in checking addresses, interviewing associates and chasing leads across jurisdictional boundaries that a fleeing suspect ignores.

Deputies said the car he was last seen in was recovered and was being driven by another witness to the shooting. The recovery of the vehicle gave investigators another thread to pull, linking the shooter’s flight from Daphne to the drop-off in downtown Mobile and adding the driver, described as a witness, to the list of people who saw the incident or its aftermath firsthand.

Investigators are still working to determine exactly what sparked the dispute, and the sheriff’s office has not disclosed whether the two men had clashed before the morning of the shooting. Workplace arguments between contract laborers at material yards can arise over equipment, scheduling, pay or personal grievances carried onto the job, and detectives were sorting through witness statements and camera footage to establish the sequence that ended with Hunter’s death.

The geography of the case illustrates how interconnected the two sides of Mobile Bay are for the people who move between them. The shooting occurred in Daphne, one of the Eastern Shore’s fastest-growing cities, where Baldwin County’s population boom has made fill-dirt operations like Friendship Materials a familiar part of the landscape. The suspect’s flight, however, carried him immediately into Mobile County, first downtown and then toward the neighborhoods of Maryvale in Mobile and across into Prichard, communities where he was known to spend time and where investigators focused their search.

Chunchula, the victim’s hometown, sits in the northern reaches of Mobile County, a rural community of quiet roads well removed from the bay’s shoreline. Hunter’s death there marked a loss for a family and a small community, and the company’s statement, the deputies’ quick response and the air ambulance crew’s effort could not change the outcome once the gunfire ended.

What Investigators Are Asking

With the suspect still at large, the sheriff’s office turned to the public for help. Anyone who sees Stallworth is urged to call 911, and the warning that he may be armed with a handgun made clear that deputies wanted sightings reported rather than approached. The distinction matters in fugitive cases: the flow of tips from residents, employers and family acquaintances in the neighborhoods a fugitive frequents is often what ends a manhunt, but only if the tips reach investigators rather than becoming encounters on the street.

The sheriff’s office also continued to interview the witnesses to the shooting itself, the workers present at the pit and the driver of the recovered car. Their accounts, combined with the security camera footage, will form the backbone of the murder case prosecutors expect to present once Stallworth is in custody, and they may also answer the question that remains open: what, exactly, set the two men against each other on a June morning at a dirt pit on Friendship Road.

Workplace violence statistics underline how unusual the case is, and also how serious. Most homicides between coworkers arise from escalating disputes rather than premeditation, and they are concentrated in industries where workers handle cash, operate in isolation or labor under piece-rate pressure. Dirt pits and material yards fall into the category of worksites where small crews spend long shifts together in remote settings, and where a single altercation has nowhere to dissipate. The security cameras that documented the Friendship Road shooting are not standard everywhere in the industry, and their presence here gave the sheriff’s office the evidentiary equivalent of an eyewitness that never blinks.

The response sequence also showed the machinery of emergency services on the Eastern Shore working as designed. A shots-fired call from a rural-industrial address brings deputies first, since they are the law enforcement backbone of unincorporated and lightly developed Baldwin County, followed by fire and ambulance resources sized to the report. The decision to summon an air ambulance reflected the severity of Hunter’s wounds as assessed at the scene, even though medics could not save him. For the residents along Friendship Road, the morning’s sirens and the overhead rotor noise were the first and, for most, the only sign that a homicide had occurred a short distance away.

The manhunt’s movement into Mobile also drew on the interagency relationships that define Gulf Coast law enforcement. Baldwin County deputies, Mobile police detectives and deputy U.S. Marshals operate under standing arrangements that let a fugitive case move across the bay without the jurisdictional friction that once slowed pursuits. Polk Street, where marshals and Mobile police executed the address search, lies in one of the older neighborhoods of the city, and the warrant service that found no one home was one of the routine, unglamorous steps that make up the bulk of fugitive investigations.

The Maryvale and Prichard areas named by investigators are neighborhoods where a suspect known to local residents can move between houses of friends and relatives, which is precisely why the sheriff’s office publicized those areas rather than keeping its focus quiet. Publicizing a fugitive’s haunts invites tips from the people best positioned to recognize him, and it warns residents that a man wanted for murder and possibly armed may be moving among them.

For Friendship Materials, the investigation leaves an operation mourning a worker and cooperating with detectives. Contract labor arrangements mean the two men were colleagues in the loose sense that brought them to the same site each morning, and the company’s statement made no attempt to characterize the dispute. What the case leaves behind, until Stallworth is located and the courts take over, is a Baldwin County worksite with a reopened question about safety, a Mobile County neighborhood list under watch, and a family in Chunchula waiting for an answer about a June morning that began as an ordinary shift.