Phil Dowdell / Facebook
A star athlete who was on his way to Jacksonville State University as a wide receiver is among the four people killed in a Sweet 16 mass shooting at a dance studio.
Police are investigating the whereabouts of a gunman who decided to shoot a local football star and more than two dozen of his peers at the Mahogany Masterpiece dance studio about 60 miles away from Montgomery, Alabama.
On April 15, Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, an honor student and football star at Dadeville High School, attended his sister’s Sweet 16. Unfortunately, the party was the target of a gunman who opened fire on unsuspecting students.
According to a close contact of Dowdell’s, his goal was to go to the NFL and take care of his mother.
In addition to playing football, he was also an honor student who played basketball and won state honors in track in 2022, according to Alabama.com.
Dowdell was one of four people killed and 28 people injured in the shooting.
In the list of fatalities, high school senior KeKe Nicole Smith was another athlete who was killed. According to the Alexander City Outlook, she was a former volleyball and softball star and was the manager of the track and field teams.
The shooting took place at 10 p.m., and the next day, a Sunday morning, hundreds of people stood inside and outside Lake Martin Community Hospital, clustered together to hear the news.
“There were probably 250 people there, family, kids, neighbors,” Ben Hayes, the senior pastor at Dadeville First Baptist Church, and is team chaplain of Dadeville High School and chaplain of Dadeville police, said. “This is a close community. They let family into the lobby. The police had asked me to be there to help comfort and for crowd control.”
“It was a very sad, sad scene,” he said. “A very rough night.”