Fluker was a 15-year veteran of the Birmingham Police Department, police Chief Patrick Smith said during a Saturday news conference. Her current assignment was to the department's crime reduction team.
"This is not a press conference that I wanted to give today or any other day, but it's about the facts and the realities of life," Smith said. "It's a press conference about a love triangle gone wrong, something that happened very bad this morning."
Patrol officers were called around 11:51 p.m. Friday to Germania Park, where the police department’s Shot Spotter detected multiple gunshots, the chief said. There, the officers found Fuller shot multiple times inside a car.
She was rushed to the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital, where she died early Saturday morning of her injuries, Smith said.
"The preliminary investigation revealed that the vehicle that this woman was in was an unmarked Birmingham Police Department vehicle," Smith said. "The victim was inside the car with an off-duty Birmingham police detective."
Credit: Google/Google Maps
Credit: Google/Google Maps
Fluker, who was quickly identified as the alleged shooter, was also off-duty at the time of the shooting, Smith said.
"It has been established that the motive of the shooting was domestic in nature," the chief said.
The male detective who was in the car with Fuller was not injured, Smith said.
Fluker, who fled the scene of the shooting, was taken into custody about seven hours later at her home.
Watch the entire news conference with Chief Patrick Smith below.
Because the investigation involves members of the police force, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has been called in to take over the criminal investigation, Smith said.
"(ALEA investigators) will be conducting an extensive investigation and following up on our detectives' findings so far," the chief said. "We've spent all of this night tracking down everything that we possibly could on this case, making sure that we had all of the evidence, secured the scene and we were tracking the right person and bringing the right person into custody.
Smith said detectives were careful about following protocol.
"Even when it leads to one of our own, we're going to make the tough call and we're going to take the right actions," he said.
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