Left: Dustin Stanfield; center: Joshua Guthrie; right: Brittany Patterson — in booking photos from December 2023. (Birmingham Police Department)
David Wayne Nicholas, 43, was desperately looking for help from neighbors late on the night before Christmas Eve after he and his girlfriend were attacked and kidnapped, according to authorities in Alabama. Now, three people have been arrested for his murder.
Dustin Stanfield, 43, Joshua Guthrie, 33, and Brittany Patterson, 33, each stand accused of capital murder and kidnapping in the first degree, according to the Birmingham Police Department.
The two men were arrested on Dec. 24, 2023. The woman was arrested this past weekend, on Dec. 30, 2023, police say.
The call to the police came just before midnight on Dec. 23, 2023, according to Officer Truman Fitzgerald. A man, later identified as Nicholas, was suffering from at least one gunshot wound and needed assistance. Officers found the victim somewhere on Lake Lane in the Huffman community. Local Fire and Rescue personnel would pronounce Nicholas dead at 12:53 a.m. on Dec. 24, 2023.
In a media briefing on Facebook, Fitzgerald said investigators determined that Nicholas was attacked at a house on the same street, but was able to leave after the violence and seek aid before he died.
From the start, police said the incident was not random.
Fitzgerald told Law&Crime that his agency could not provide the requested information about the case “because the investigation is active and ongoing.” But charging documents gathered by local media shed some light on the brutal contours of the late December slaying.
Nicholas was killed amid the trio’s attempt to abduct, injure or sexually violate him, court papers obtained by AL.com allege. The defendants allegedly had the same, or a similar, plan for the dead man’s girlfriend, those documents claim — though she survived.
Leeds Police Chief Paul Irwin, in comments to the Trussville Tribune, remarked on Guthrie’s arrest at a Walmart Supercenter some 20 miles away from the scene of the prior night’s murder.
“The city of Birmingham was looking for someone that had committed a homicide and after they committed the homicide, they took the victim’s significant other,” Irwin told the local news website. “They had her and we found her in the vehicle with the suspect at the Walmart. We took him into custody for murder.”
The female victim had been stripped naked and beaten and was hospitalized for a concussion, she told AL.com.
The arrest of Guthrie also provided some additional insight into the case. Authorities identified one of the men arrested as the ex-boyfriend of the woman who had been kidnapped, according to AL.com. However, they did not specify which male defendant.
Nicholas’s family started a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses.
“Our sweet David was taken suddenly from us on Christmas Eve,” the fundraiser reads. “We are all heartbroken but most of all his mother, who has been in UAB hospital fighting for her life for over three months. We are trying to come together to help her put her sweet angel in his final resting place.”
The victim has a page on the National Gun Violence Memorial.
All three defendants are being held in the Jefferson County Jail without bond, according to police.
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