5 years later, mother of slain Decatur man still waits for justice

Feb. 24—Georgia Irvin spoke with her youngest son hours before he was murdered. She was immobilized in room 218 at Huntsville Hospital. She had been in a car wreck. Her back was crushed, her left ankle mangled. Both arms were broken. She asked her husband to fetch her phone so she could call her "baby."

"What baby?" he asked. "Who you going to call this late at night?"

"My baby," she said. "Dooney."

"Dooney" was Michael Wayne Irvin Jr.'s nickname. He answered his mother's call on the third ring. He told her he mastered the art of grilling.

"Boy, you can't even boil water," his mother said.

He told her she had to get her ankle fixed. It was no good to walk around in pain. He planned on coming to the hospital at 10 a.m. the next morning to take her to The Orthopaedic Center in Huntsville.

"Last three things he told me," Georgia Irvin recalled, "was mama, I love you. I love you. I love you.

"And he hung up."

Hours later, at around 2 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2019 — five years ago Sunday — Michael Irvin was gunned down in his home, in front of his 4-year-old daughter, on Marion Street Southwest in Decatur. He was shot 11 times, according to police testimony, first at the front door and then throughout the house until he died in the laundry room near the back door. Police said it was an attempted burglary. Irvin was 30 years old.

The phone in the hospital room rang. Judging by the time, Georgia Irvin knew the news wouldn't be good. She woke up her husband and told him to call the number back.

"When he did, he went over to the bathroom, and the next thing I heard was him screaming," she said. "And I'm begging him to come tell me what's going on. Seemed like it took him an hour.

"When he come in the bedroom, he sit down on the side of the bed and said, 'Our baby gone.'

"I said, 'He'll be back. You know how he run off. He'll be back.'

"He said, 'Naw, our baby gone.'

"I said, 'What do you mean by that? Why do you keep saying he gone?'

"I couldn't get up. Couldn't walk. Couldn't even go to my baby." — Charges

Two men were charged with capital murder in Irvin's death: Ulysses Ke'Andre Wilkerson, 23, and Zachary Bernard Wiliams, 35.

Irvin's longtime girlfriend and mother of two of his children, Leslie Huaracha, was at a nightclub and returned home around 3 a.m. to find Irvin's body on the floor in the laundry room, according to testimony.

Shortly after the murder, a man named Brian O'Neal Wiggins voluntarily approached police to say that Williams, of Hartselle, had confessed the crime to him. "This witness was able to explain specific items about the crime scene that only the persons involved would know," according to then-Decatur police Detective Sean Mukaddam.

Irvin charged Williams after Williams broke in the front door, and Williams immediately shot him, Wiggins allegedly told Mukaddam. Williams' alleged confession to Wiggins was not recorded.

"(Irvin's youngest daughter) kept telling how she remembered Williams' eyes," Georgia Irvin said. "I went up and talked to the victim's advocate about it. I said do y'all see what my grandchild is trying to tell y'all."

At Williams' trial, Wiggins denied that he and Williams had any discussions about Michael Irvin.

Irvin's youngest daughter pointed at Williams during the trial when asked if the man who killed her father was in the courtroom. That testimony, however, conflicted with her failure to identify Williams in three separate photo lineups shortly after the shooting and her videotaped statement to a forensics interviewer that she had not seen the intruder's face.

A unanimous jury in December 2022 found Williams not guilty. He's in jail awaiting a June trial on an unrelated charge of certain persons forbidden to possess a pistol.

The Morgan County District Attorney's Office in August, less than a week before his trial was to begin, entered into a plea agreement with Wilkerson, of Decatur. His charge was reduced to conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to five years in jail, minus time served. District Attorney Scott Anderson said the prosecution faced evidentiary problems in the case against Wilkerson.

Irvin's mother said Wilkerson is expected to be released in April.

After Wilkerson's plea agreement was finalized last year, Anderson said there would be no further investigation into Irvin's death unless additional evidence comes to light. He said that would be "highly unlikely."

Irvin's family was consulted before the agreement and understood the evidentiary problems the prosecution faced, according to Anderson.

"I never agreed to that," Georgia Irvin said. "All I know is they kept saying we ain't got enough evidence, but that's it. Why would I agree to a man that done murdered my child to walk free?

"I've never talked to Scott Anderson point blank, period, no time."

Anderson on Thursday said he didn't discuss the case with the Irvin family because it was assigned to Assistant DA Garick Vickery and veteran prosecutor Paul Matthews, "who has tried as many capital murder cases in this state as any other prosecutor."

Vickery and Matthews were more than capable of handling the case, according to Anderson.

"This office is confident that Mukaddam and the Decatur Police Department's investigation in this case was thorough and that we had all the facts and information that was available," he said. — 5 years of grief

Georgia Irvin moves slowly now. Lingering pain from the wreck, or grief, weighs on her. She is soft-spoken; she measures every word. She thinks about her youngest son 24/7.

"There's no such thing as forgetting about it, because it stays in your mind at all times," she said. "He was special. He was the baby boy. I have pictures all over the house."

Irvin said she had asked God for three boys and three girls. After having five children, she didn't intend to become pregnant again. Dooney was a surprise blessing.

"My mom always gave us nicknames, all 10 of us," she said. "So, when I brought him home from the hospital — he didn't weigh but 6 pounds and some ounces — I said I have to give him a nickname."

"Doon-doon" came out of the baby's mouth, Irvin recalled, and she began calling him Dooney. He grew up with the nickname. It's what his friends called him.

Dooney ran track and played football at Decatur High School. Later, he and a former classmate bought an 18-wheeler. At the time of his death, Dooney was the owner of HLM Trucking LLC.

"He told his daughter that this was daddy's dream, and he wanted to leave his children something in life," Irvin said. "He was a good worker."

Dooney used to frequent Dollar General where his cousin, Whittney Stinnett, worked. She remembers him bringing his children into the store and spoiling them.

"Anything that you needed from a father — Dooney exemplified that," she said.

When New Way Out, a grassroots community outreach group, held one of their first annual Easter egg hunts at Pines Park, Stinnett said Dooney donated bicycles to the children. After he passed, Stinnett said she continues to donate to the event to keep Dooney's name alive.

"He came to see me at work a lot," said Dooney's aunt, Ruth Flynn, who worked at NARCOG Transit. "He used to buy my lunch and we'd just sit around and talk. He was real sweet."

He was especially close with his youngest daughter. They used to nap on the floor together, the crowns of their heads touching.

"She loved her daddy," Georgia Irvin said. "She wouldn't stay with nobody but him. On Valentine's Day, he would bring her a bear and flowers to her school in Athens."

Dooney's two youngest now live with Huaracha in California. Occasionally, when they're in Decatur, Huaracha takes them to visit Dooney's headstone at Sterrs Cemetery. The youngest daughter leaves Goldfish crackers — one of Dooney's favorite snacks — on the grave.

"Daddy, they better be gone when I come back," she tells him.

Dooney was also close to a nephew that he all but raised, according to Irvin. The boy considered Dooney his father.

"At the funeral, he was crying, and he asked me: 'Grandmama, what am I going to do without my daddy?'" Irvin recalled.

When Irvin was laid up in the hospital, Dooney would call to check on her: "Mama, you done did your exercises? You ain't did none. Get started right now, because I'm on my way."

During that last phone call, she said she never opened her eyes.

"God showed him to me," she said. "Just like I'm sitting here looking at you. And there was a bronze glow all around him. And that smile he had on his face — it was awesome."

— david.gambino@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438. @DD_DavidGambino