A researcher at the University of Alabama in Birmingham found fatally shot after his car slammed into a pole, authorities said.
David Gibbs Westbrook Jr., 50, crashed his SUV into a utility pole in east Birmingham late Monday and responding cops determined he had been shot, police told AL.com.
No arrests had been made as of Friday and investigators aren’t ruling out the possibility that the manager of the Christian Faul Lab at UAB’s Heersink School of Medicine was shot during an attempted robbery or carjacking.
David Gibbs Westbrook Jr. was described as “one of the most kind human beings.”Christian Faul Lab
A “clear motive” for the slaying has not been determined in the ongoing investigation, Birmingham police Sgt. Rod Mauldin told The Post.
“It’s a really big shock,” Westbrook’s friend, Kelly Hawthorne Jefferson, told AL.com. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense … I just can’t imagine him being targeted.”
Jefferson said Westbrook, of Birmingham, what “one of the most kind human beings out there” and didn’t deserve to die the way he did.
“If he had a dollar in his pocket and a homeless person walked up to him, he would hand it to him even if it was all he had left,” Jefferson continued.
Westbrook, an academic researcher at UAB for 25 years, had rescued a dog named Dankers and quickly got attached to the Labrador that was in the SUV with him when he died. The animal is now being cared for by a relative, AL.com reported.
“He loved to be outside and walk around and take the dog with him and hang out at Railroad Park,” Jefferson said. “He never met a stranger. He was easy to talk to, very down to earth.”
The public research university was reeling in the aftermath of Westbrook’s slaying, according to a UAB statement released Friday.
“The UAB community is heartbroken over David’s tragic loss to a senseless act of gun violence,” the college said. “He was a wonderful friend, colleague and valued member of the community.”
Westbrook had published articles on mitochondrial genetics and metabolomics, UAB officials said, most recently focusing on the effects of phosphate in chronic kidney disease.
