Steven Tyler Whitehead is claiming self-defense in the October 19, 2025, shooting death of 18-year-old Kimber Mills at a bonfire party in Alabama.
Whitehead “is seeking to have his charges dropped, arguing his actions were justified as self-defense under state law,” New York Post reported
WBRC reported that Whitehead, 28, allegedly shot four people at the party in 2025, including Mills, who was shot in the head. She died from her wounds.
The Post noted that Mills was a cheerleader and a “senior at Cleveland High School who planned to attend the University of Alabama.”
Kimber Mills (Instagram)
In its initial press release on the matter, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said that “a verbal and physical altercation escalated, resulting in gunfire.”
Silas McCay, one of the shooting victims who survived the incident, admitted to fighting Whitehead and taking him to the ground after learning that he was allegedly bothering Mills. “My buddy and I found him, and we started fighting him. I grabbed him and put him over my shoulder and had him on the ground. My buddy pulled me off him, and that’s when he pulled his gun out and started shooting,” McCay told WRBC.
Whitehead is currently out on bond “with pending murder and attempted murder charges” and plans to claim that he fired the shots in self-defense when he appears for a pre-trial immunity hearing in December, the Post explained.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.