Two additional arrests have been made in connection with a Jefferson County shooting that led to the death of Cleveland High School cheerleader Kimber Mills and left three others injured.
Silas McCay, 21, and Hunter McCulloch, 19, were booked into the Jefferson County Jail Thursday on a third-degree assault charge. Witnesses say that McCay was struck several times when shots were fired during a bonfire party in a wooded area of Pinson commonly known as “The Pit” on Oct. 19.
Both McCulloch and McCay have since been released from jail on a $6,000 bond.
The suspect arrested for the shooting, 27-year-old Steven Tyler Whitehead, was initially charged with 3 counts of attempted murder. A murder charge was added days later following Mills’ death and organ donation. He remains behind bars.
A petition on Change.org has urged prosecutors to file charges against McCay, claiming that videos of the shooting show McCay antagonizing and jumping Whitehead. McCay has stated he was protecting Kimber Mills.
Many members of Mills’ family, along with hundreds of others, have signed the petition. Some have commented that the shooting might not have occurred if McCay had not fought with Whitehead.
In a bombshell that has Jefferson County prosecutors recharting the darkest hours of the Pinson bonfire massacre, the District Attorney’s office confirmed Tuesday that Silas McCay, 21, and Joshua Hunter McCulloch, 19 – the duo arrested last week for allegedly assaulting the prime suspect – will make their first joint court appearance at a preliminary hearing on November 12. But eclipsing even that procedural milestone is the real thunderbolt: Kimber Mills’ innermost confidante, the same 17-year-old Cleveland High junior who earlier revealed a haunting pre-midnight whisper of “hearing it again,” has surrendered a clandestine 12-second video clip she hoarded for over two weeks. Investigators, poring over the footage in a locked Birmingham lab, declare it a potential timeline nuke – one that could recast the chaos at “The Pit” from a spontaneous brawl into something far more premeditated, with echoes rippling back to that eerie metallic thunk captured in prior clips and forward to Mills’ final, whispered plea on her phone.
The hearing, slated before Judge Kandice Pickett in Birmingham’s crowded circuit court, marks the first time McCay and McCulloch – both bonded out on $6,000 apiece after third-degree assault charges tied to an alleged pre-shooting beatdown of Steven Tyler Whitehead – will stand shoulder-to-shoulder under the glare of flashing cameras and a gallery packed with Mills’ pink-clad supporters. DA Danny Carr’s office, in a terse statement to AL.com, emphasized the probe’s fluidity: “This hearing will probe probable cause on the assaults, but new evidence continues to emerge, potentially broadening charges.” Whispers from the courthouse suggest ballistics and witness alignments could entangle the pair deeper – perhaps upgrading to hindering or even conspiracy if the video ties their aggression to Whitehead’s trigger finger. McCay, the self-proclaimed “hero” shot 10 times while shielding friends (per his TikTok post that netted $2,000 in GoFundMe aid), and McCulloch, his 19-year-old sidekick from Remlap, have lawyered up, their Change.org petition – now at 8,500 signatures – painting them as defenders against an “unhinged intruder.” Yet, with Whitehead’s capital murder bond hiked to $2 million, the hearing risks devolving into a blame octagon, pitting “vigilantes” against “victim.”
But the video – oh, the video. Christened “Kimber’s Shadow” by forensics techs for its ghostly implications, the 12-second snippet was shot on the confidante’s iPhone 14 at 12:02 AM, a razor-thin window between Mills’ pendant-fiddling log perch and her vanishing into the treeline for that 14-second call at 12:04 AM. The friend, “Taylor L.” – who months ago (in this case’s fevered timeline, mere days) spilled about the 11:58 PM whisper and her viral 22-second TikTok replay exposing that doubled thunk – held this gem close, paralyzed by its implications. “I filmed it casual, you know? Us goofing off,” Taylor told WVTM 13 in an exclusive sit-down, her voice a fragile thread over coffee in a Pinson diner. “But replaying it after… God, it shows him. Lurking. And Silas [McCay] yelling something that sounds like a dare. I kept it secret ’cause it felt like betraying everyone – Kimber, Silas, the whole mess. But she deserves the full story out.”
Handed over Monday in a nondescript envelope at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Homicide Unit, the clip – timestamped via EXIF metadata to October 18, 12:02:03 AM – unfolds like a prelude to pandemonium. The frame, shaky from Taylor’s tipsy grip, opens on Mills mid-laugh, her pink crop top a neon slash against the bonfire’s amber haze, silver pendant swinging as she sways to a faint Luke Bryan loop. The crowd – 40-odd souls from Cleveland High and beyond, string lights weaving a false cocoon – mills in peripheral blur: beer cans glint, laughter spikes, a line-dance chain snakes into view. But at 0:04, the pivot: The camera pans right, catching a hulking shadow at the wood’s edge – 27-year-old Whitehead, sources confirm, his frame unmistakable from intake photos, slouched against a pine with a half-lit cigarette, eyes locked on the girls’ cluster. No smile, no sway; just a predator’s poise, one hand dipping toward his waistband where his .38 later spat death.
The real gut-punch hits at 0:07: McCay bursts into frame from the left, chest puffed, gesturing wildly toward Whitehead’s silhouette. Audio, muddled by fire crackle and bass throb, captures a guttural “You lost, man? This ain’t your pit!” – McCay’s voice, per lip-read experts, laced with booze-fueled bravado. McCulloch hovers in the backdrop, a nod away, his nod a silent second. Mills freezes, pendant clutched tight, her free hand grazing Taylor’s arm in unspoken alarm. The clip cuts at 0:12 on a group hoot – oblivious revelry swallowing the tension – but not before a faint click, that spectral twin to the earlier thunk, reverberates like a chamber racking in the underbrush. “It changes everything,” a sheriff’s source leaked to this desk, voice hushed over burner phone. “Whitehead wasn’t ambushed at 12:24; he was clocked at 12:02. McCay’s ‘welcome’ escalated it. And Kimber? She saw it all, which explains the call, the whisper, the pendant drop. This isn’t crossfire; it’s a fuse lit 22 minutes early.”
Forensic deep-dive, underway at UAB’s audio-visual lab with Auburn consultants, amplifies the stakes. Spectral analysis isolates Whitehead’s shadow: height 6’1″, build matching his 210-pound booking stats, even the cigarette’s ember glow syncing with a discarded Marlboro butt from the scene. McCay’s shout? Voiceprint 92% match to his TikTok rants. And that click? Preliminary waveform suggests a slide lock, not a lighter flick – bolstering theories Whitehead test-fired or dry-cycled his piece, the sound that spooked Mills into her “hearing it again” mantra. “Timeline was fluid before,” Dr. Lena Torres, a digital forensics adjunct at Samford University, opined off-record. “Now it’s ironclad: Intrusion at 12:02, confrontation brew, call at 12:04 as escape hatch, shots at 12:24 as boil-over. The pendant on the log? Maybe snatched in a 12:03 scuffle we missed.” Social media, that double-edged echo chamber, ignites: #PitVideo12 surges with 2.3 million views on TikTok duets, Reddit’s r/TrueCrimeAL splicing it against the 22-second thunk reel; X threads (formerly Twitter) erupt in 4chan-lite debates, one viral post overlaying the clip on Mills’ honor walk footage – her procession of 300 at UAB on October 22, pink bows trailing like comet tails.
Taylor’s handover, born of sleepless nights and a priest’s nudge, carries survivor’s shrapnel. “I kept it ’cause it felt like my fault – filming instead of yelling, ‘Kimber, run!'” she confessed, tears carving paths through smudged mascara. “But hiding it dishonored her. That whisper? The pendant? My old video? This ties it – she was warning us from the start.” Mills’ family, bastions of grace in grief’s gale, hails the drop. Mother Lisa, via a Live from the silver-heart memorial log under Pinson oaks, choked: “Our girl’s voice, captured forever. This video? It’s her justice, loud and clear.” GoFundMe swells to $350,000, funneled to the “Kimber’s Echo Fund” for Pit patrols and teen de-escalation apps; sister Ashley, chronicler of the organ gift that revived a 7-year-old Atlanta boy and a 42-year-old Birmingham mom, adds: “Heart and lungs from Kimber beat on. Now this clip beats back the lies.”
The November 12 hearing, a procedural pit stop en route to grand jury, looms as flashpoint. Whitehead’s public defender eyes suppression motions on the video as “fruit of delayed disclosure,” while McCay’s camp – buoyed by petition firepower – preps self-defense affidavits, claiming Whitehead’s lurk was the spark. McCulloch, quieter in filings, bonds out to family in Jefferson County, his silence a strategic hush. The three other victims – the elder male still rehabbing nine bullets, the 18- and 20-year-olds mending psyches – submit amicus briefs from hospital beds, their whispers aligning: “Saw the shadow early. Heard the yell.” Broader ripples: HB-478, the “Pit Patrol Bill,” gains bipartisan legs, mandating landowner cams and noise curfews; Cleveland High’s AI audio sentinels, tuned to thunk-like anomalies, roll out campus-wide.
As Alabama’s autumn leaves bleed crimson under The Pit’s pines, Taylor’s 12 seconds stand sentinel – a digital dirge demanding daylight. For Mills, the cheer captain whose “spunk to her step” lit bonfires and broke hearts, it recasts her not as collateral, but Cassandra: foreseer of the fray, her pendant a dropped gauntlet, her call a clarion ignored. “She filmed fate,” Taylor murmurs. “Now it films back.” Prosecutors vow: At the hearing, timelines crack open. Justice, once whispered, will roar.
In Kimber’s unyielding light, this video isn’t evidence; it’s elegy – a 12-second symphony of what was, what warned, and what must never be again. For the girl who danced into dawn, only to fall at its edge, her closest friend’s secret now screams: Listen. Act. Remember.
