Ava Walters, a second-year Health Information Management student from Florida, died Sunday at an off-campus university facility in Montgomery.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama State University is mourning the death of 20-year-old student Ava Walters after a Sunday emergency at an off-campus university facility developed into a homicide investigation and the arrest of a 22-year-old man authorities identified in court records as her boyfriend.
The university first announced Walters’ death without identifying her or explaining what had happened. School officials said emergency medical personnel responded to an incident at the off-campus facility, where the student was pronounced dead, and that the investigation had been turned over to the Montgomery Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division. Details released afterward changed the public understanding of the case as police classified the death as a homicide and made an arrest.
Walters was a second-year Health Information Management major from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Alabama State President Quinton Ross Jr. said. The university identified her after relatives had been notified and expressed condolences to her family, friends and classmates as the investigation continued.
Police said officers were sent shortly before 11 a.m. Sunday to the 1600 block of Interstate Park Drive. The location is an off-campus Alabama State facility used for housing. Officers found Walters unresponsive, and she was pronounced dead.
Authorities later arrested Jalil Bivens, 22, also of Fort Lauderdale, and booked him into the Montgomery County Detention Facility on a murder charge. Court documents subsequently identified Walters and Bivens as dating.
The court records also disclosed investigators’ allegation about Walters’ death. Based in part on a statement attributed to Bivens, authorities determined that Walters was strangled, according to the documents. The allegation has not been adjudicated, and Bivens is accused of murder rather than convicted of the offense.
The sequence of announcements marked a rapid shift from the university’s initial notice of an unexplained student death to a criminal case. School officials initially said only that a student had died following an incident. Police then confirmed the homicide investigation and an arrest before court records supplied additional information about the relationship between Walters and the accused man and investigators’ account of what occurred.
Ross said the university community was grieving Walters’ death and extended condolences to those who knew her. The loss brought the homicide investigation directly into the Alabama State community because Walters was enrolled at the university and died at a property connected to the school, though the facility is off the main campus.
Authorities have not publicly established a motive in the reporting reviewed for this article, and the investigation remains open. Local reporting listed Walters as Montgomery’s 34th homicide victim of the year. Bivens remained held on the murder charge while police continued investigating the circumstances surrounding her death.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 26, 2026.