A pizza delivery driver was fatally shot in Birmingham on New Year’s night marking the city’s first homicide of 2025. The shooting occurred in the 400 block of Roebuck Drive around 9 p.m. when the victim was making a delivery to a local residence.
Derek Marcus Burpo, 51, of Birmingham, was found unresponsive when officers with the city’s police department arrived on the scene. Authorities have since said that they received two calls before discovering the victim. The first caller reported shots fired while the second caller reported an adult male lying unresponsive on a private roadway suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.
The sadness and pain the situation has caused is not lost on the BPD.
“This is one of the most heart-breaking homicides that we have witnessed in our city,” Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said per WBRC6. “You have a man that’s out on the very first day of 2025 making a living, trying to support his family and someone committed the worst robbery that you can commit. Robbed a family of their loved one.”
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There have been no arrests made. Authorities believe that the shooting may have been the result of a robbery.
It’s not the first time a pizza delivery driver has been killed in Birmingham while making a delivery. In 2014, Corey Arrington, Jr. killed and robbed Najeh Masaeid at the District at the Summit apartments. Arrington was sentenced to twenty years for the murder.
Burpo’s death comes two weeks after the city of Birmingham officially broke its 91-year-old annual homicide record.
Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @ShipleyAusten
