Horror on Gravel Hill Road

 

Gravel Hill Road is just what the name suggests, a mainly barren narrow road cut through fields to provide ingress and egress to one of the many mining facilities in rural Franklin County. If you key the house number 5476 into Google, you'll not find the house itself, but a vacant county road surrounded by scruff. Check the address on property records and the names of two local crime families appear. 

Yet in March 2023, Kimberly Nicole Boykin and her boyfriend Brian C. Williams were living in the home, along with at least three of their combined children - at least four different surnames were in use among the (whole/half) siblings listed in the obituary of Jacob Christopher Williams.

On that Saturday, Jacob (8) and his brother (4) were playing outside the Phil Campbell home they shared. Bored, they resorted to their mother's vehicle for diversion. What they found was an unsecured handgun. The two boys then entered the house and made their way to a bedroom where the four year-old shot Jacob in the chest.

When Nikki Boykin realized her son had been shot, she immediately left the home, telling an older child that they were in charge. The child called 911, and Jacob eventually made it to the children's hospital in Birmingham, but it was too late. 

Boykin asked for funds to be donated for Jacob's funeral expenses. What she got was an indictment for Criminally Negligent Homicide. Less than eight hours after her arrest yesterday, Nikki Boykin bonded out of the Franklin County Detention Center.

If convicted of the Class A misdemeanor, the 36 year-old Boykin faces a year in jail and a $6,000.00 fine. It's sad that she can't have the title "mother" taken from her.