A University of Alabama student, her friend and a dog he was looking after were all found shot dead at a home in Brookwood, Alabama, and a suspect has since been arrested following an hours-long standoff with police. The killings matter both as a shocking triple death and because the crime was uncovered through a pet owner's remote doorbell and surveillance footage, which captured suspicious activity and led to the discovery of the bodies.

Jazmine Alexis Bates, 22, and Jose Felix Alvarez-Duenas, 31, a single father of three, were colleagues at Buffalo Phil's restaurant in Tuscaloosa. Alvarez-Duenas had been pet-sitting a friend's dog while she was away; when she could not reach him, she checked her cameras remotely and saw a man behaving suspiciously on her back porch in the early hours of 6 July. She alerted her landlord, who asked Brookwood police to carry out a welfare check. Officers found Alvarez-Duenas's body inside, Bates's body in a closet and the dog shot dead. Footage helped identify the suspect as De'Kendrick Crawford, 24, who already had an outstanding felony warrant for shooting into an occupied building in May 2026.