Who K*lled a Cherished Ala. Student-Athlete as He Left a Basketball Game with a Friend?

The 17-year-old was leaving a high school basketball game with a friend, Tuesday night, Nov. 12, when someone fired multiple shots into their vehicle, striking the student-athlete.

Gerald Andre Lomax Jr., 17, was pronounced dead at a Birmingham, Ala., hospital just before noon the following day, Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates confirmed in a press release to PEOPLE.

Gerald, a senior at P.D. Jackson-Olin High School, was a varsity basketball and football player, who also held a job at Foot Locker, according to his social media.

His head football coach, Joe Webb III, a former NFL quarterback from Birmingham, mourned the death of his player – who closed out the season playing defensive end, offensive guard and tight end – on a series of Instagram Story posts. 

“‘Preciate everything you done for the Mustang family!” Webb wrote over a photograph of Gerald running along the sideline, football crooked under his arm. In a second photograph of the 17-year-old standing on the field, hands on his hips, head turned, his coach lamented that his player’s dream of college had been cut short. “God was preparing you for His Kingdom,” Webb wrote.

Birmingham police responded to a report of a person shot around 9:50 p.m. Tuesday.

Arriving officers found Gerald unresponsive but alive, suffering from a gunshot wound at Woodlawn High School.

Sgt. LaQuitta Wade tells PEOPLE that Gerald had “attended a basketball game at the high school with a friend” – he was not playing that night – and was shot on a nearby roadway, a two-minute drive from the school.

Neither Jackson-Olin nor Woodlawn men’s varsity basketball teams had a game scheduled Tuesday, nor were they slated to play each other this season. JV schedules for both teams had not been posted on the high school sports website MaxPreps.com. 

On Oct. 10, the football teams played each other in Jackson-Olin’s lone win of the season.

According to police’s preliminary investigation, Gerald was “involved in a verbal altercation” while leaving the basketball game, per a series of press releases connected to the case. The friends “attempted to leave” but an “unknown suspect fired multiple shots into their vehicle,” striking Gerald in the passenger’s seat. 

Gerald’s friend drove to nearby Woodlawn High School seeking help, per police. The shooter left in an “unknown vehicle.”

As of Friday morning Nov. 15, no one had been apprehended in connection to the shooting, Birmingham police confirm to PEOPLE.

Police have not identified a motive beyond the verbal altercation and it is unclear if Gerald knew the shooter, according to Wade. 

His mother, Courtney Brown, stayed with her son at the hospital as he succumbed to his injuries.

“I laid there with my baby until he took his last breath,” Brown told AL.com in an interview adding through tears: “I told him that I loved him and that I was very proud of him, and that he made me so proud. I promised I would take care of his brother and sister.”