Alfreda Janapril Fluker appears in a mugshot from the Birmingham Police Department.
A former Birmingham Police Department detective will spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole over a love triangle that left the other woman dead.
Alfreda Janapril Fluker, 43, was convicted in November 2020 of one count of murder in the first degree over the April 2020 shooting death of 43-year-old Kanisha Necole Fuller, Fox News reports.
The defendant was also convicted on one count of attempted murder over the shooting that also targeted Mario Theodore White, Fluker’s police partner and common-law husband at the time.
On Monday, Fluker was sentenced to life in prison for both convictions, Birmingham-based CBS affiliate WIAT reported.
Fuller’s mother, Janice Andrews, told the TV station she was happy with the punishment meted out to her daughter’s killer.
“I feel God is good all the time,” Andrews told WIAT in an interview. “No matter what your title is, you just can’t go around killing people. People got family.”
The shooting occurred late one Friday night, police said. Fuller and White were in an unmarked police car in the Germania Park neighborhood of Birmingham when several shots rang out. White, who was in a romantic relationship with both women, was not hit by the bullets.
Fluker testified in her defense during a four-day trial during which her defense attorneys argued she was overcome with anger and acting in the heat of passion, AL.com reported.
“They were having sex in the passenger’s seat in the work truck,’’ Fluker testified. “She was on top of him, and they were having sex. All I could visualize was them having sex in that truck that I ride in every day.”
She said she didn’t mean to kill anyone.
“I went to my truck, and I pulled my weapon and I just started recklessly firing,’’ Fluker went on to tell jurors – saying she fired her weapon from around 100 to 150 feet away. “I wanted Mario to know to stop playing with me. I wanted him to respect me.”
She was a 15-year veteran of the police agency, the department noted after she was arrested.
“Even when it leads to one of our own, we are going to make the tough call and we are going to take the right actions,” Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith said at the time, reported by local ABC affiliate WBMA.
Authorities testified at trial that Fuller was shot in the leg, arm, and head. The injury to her head caused what police called a devastating injury to her brain. She died at a hospital.
Remarking on the domestic nature of the attack, the police chief mused about the sad day that had befallen his department.
“It’s about the facts and reality of life,” Smith said. “This is a love triangle gone wrong.”
Police said they believed Fuller, the mother of a teenage son, had been seeing White for some time.
“No one is above the law,’’ Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr said in comments reported by AL.com. “We hope that this sentence today finally gives the victim’s family some peace.”