#Alabama State University student charged in classmate’s death

An Alabama State University junior has been charged with fatally shooting a classmate who disappeared after leaving his dorm room to grab cash, police said.

Ivry Hall, a 20-year-old Golden Gloves boxer originally from Chicago, was arrested Friday in the death of ASU sophomore Adam Dowdell Jr., whose body was found Sept. 14 less than a quarter-mile away from campus, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

Dowdell, 22, of Alabaster, was reported missing six days earlier after leaving his room to go to an ATM, was shot to death, Montgomery police said.

Hall was profiled by the newspaper in 2018 while a freshman at ASU, which he attends on a scholarship after graduating high school as valedictorian despite the death of both of his parents, the newspaper reported.

He is the first in his family to graduate high school and go to college.

Hall recently returned to Chicago after Dowdell’s death and met with The Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church on the city’s South Side, where he urged the promising boxer to surrender to authorities back in Alabama, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“He was back in Chicago for a couple days,” Pfleger told the newspaper. “I spoke with him and sought to pastor him and counsel him, and we contacted the police and set up his return to Montgomery.”

Hall has previously credited Pfleger’s guidance and a Chicago boxing group, the Crushers Club, with helping him turn away from gang life. The young pugilist began running with gangs as early as 8 years old and started selling drugs a year later, according to the report.

Hall was also featured in a short documentary film called “Ivry” in which he’s seen working with younger boxers while using his story to compel them to better their life as he did, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“When I was 12 years old I had about three tattoos,” Hall told a 12-year-old boy in the documentary. “I done already had like three guns. I been locked up twice. I sold drugs. I got shot at, I shot people. You ever heard of karma?”

After the boy said he did, Hall said he “did all that stuff” and didn’t realize the gravity of his actions until his mother passed away from cancer at age 48. His estranged father, meanwhile, died years later when was a senior in high school, the Tribune reported.

“Now I got people in heaven watching down over me, and I know I gotta make them smile in heaven,” Hall told the boy. “I didn’t make them smile when they were down here, so I gotta make them smile in heaven.”

Montgomery police said the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain unknown, The Birmingham News reported.

“There is no additional information available for release in connection to this continuing investigation,” police said in a statement Friday.

Hall remained in custody Sunday at a Montgomery County detention facility on $250,000 bond, the Tribune reported.

Pfleger, meanwhile, said he was stunned when he learned Hall was a suspect in Dowdell’s slaying.

“I really don’t know this – what he’s being accused of, I’ve not seen nor known that person,” Pfleger said. “I don’t know him. I do know the Ivry who’s a kind kid, who’s a gentle spirit, who’s been faithful at church, who’s always pushing himself as a student. That’s the Ivry I know and that I believe in.”