Main: Starmichael Tucker (Dynasty Feltus/WKRG). Inset: Charles Carson-Dowdy (Escambia County Sheriff’s Office).
A 31-year-old man from Alabama has been sentenced to spend his life in prison after prosecutors said he crossed state lines by Uber to confront his former girlfriend in Florida following their breakup, then fatally shot her and used her vehicle to run her over more than once.
Charles Carson-Dowdy, of Mobile, Alabama, received a life sentence in federal prison in the killing of Starmichael L. Tucker, according to federal prosecutors, who announced the punishment in a news release. He was sentenced on convictions including cyberstalking, interstate domestic violence, murder through the use of a firearm and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Court records outlining the factual basis for Carson-Dowdy’s guilty plea say he and Tucker started dating in October 2024. By the holiday season, while Tucker was in California visiting relatives, the relationship had deteriorated, with text exchanges between the two growing increasingly hostile.
According to the statement of facts, Carson-Dowdy admitted during one text conversation that he had secretly gone through private messages stored on Tucker’s cellphone while they were together. Prosecutors said the disclosure caused Tucker significant emotional distress, and she then tried to break off the relationship.
On Jan. 1, 2025, as Tucker made her way back to Florida, she again attempted to end things. Carson-Dowdy responded by ordering an Uber from his home in Mobile to Tucker’s apartment in Pensacola, Florida, intending to confront her about the relationship, authorities said.
Prosecutors said he traveled with a Taurus handgun and an extra loaded magazine, even though a prior felony conviction barred him from possessing either a gun or ammunition.
Carson-Dowdy got into Tucker’s home without permission and later texted her to make clear he was already inside, according to the factual basis. When Tucker arrived, she discovered him waiting in the apartment. Two people who communicated with Tucker around that time said she was extremely upset, and she told one of them that Carson-Dowdy was the reason for her distress.
The following evening, Tucker left her apartment at about 8 p.m. Carson-Dowdy followed her outside and fired “an initial volley of approximately four shots.”
The bullets struck Tucker in the back, and she collapsed in the parking lot.
“Carson-Dowdy then walked over to where Ms. Tucker was lying wounded on the ground and shot her approximately ten more times at close range,” prosecutors wrote in the news release. “Carson-Dowdy then entered the victim’s vehicle parked nearby, and deliberately drove the car over Ms. Tucker’s body. He then reversed the car to drive over her body again, and then drove forward running over the victim’s body a third time.”
After inflicting the fatal wounds, Carson-Dowdy fled the scene in Tucker’s car.
At approximately 8:32 p.m., Carson-Dowdy texted one of Tucker’s family members: “Star is dead.” Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with another witness and admitted that he had shot Tucker “sixteen times.”
Authorities later found Carson-Dowdy in Spanish Fort, Alabama, inside Tucker’s vehicle. The Taurus handgun used in the killing was found inside the car.
The factual basis for Carson-Dowdy’s guilty plea states that he “deliberately and intentionally took the victim’s life with premeditated intent.”
U.S. Attorney John P. Heekin said Tucker’s family and friends had been “robbed” of her presence by Carson-Dowdy’s actions.
“This defendant’s actions took an innocent life and devastated a family,” ATF Tampa Field Division Special Agent in Charge Kirk Howard said in a statement. “Today’s sentence holds him accountable and hopefully, helps the victim’s family take one step toward closure.”
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