The Alabama-LSU football rivalry is now completely out of control.It started last year when an Alabama fan was fatally injured after a verbal altercation with two LSU fans during the SEC West confrontation when an Alabama fan was fatally injured after a verbal altercation with two LSU fans. This year, an LSU fan, 29-year old James Michael Roland Merritt was shot with a pistol by 31-year old David Allen Fulkerson, an Alabama fan, during the game. After spending a week on life support, Merritt died last Friday when the family decided to pull the plug.
Fulkerson was originally charged with attempted murder; that charge has been since upgraded to murder.
“They just got into it over the gall game,” Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson told the Baton Rouge Advocate. “They’d been jawing at each other all day. Alcohol played a big part in it.”
Williamson said that Fulkerson’s and Merritt’s girlfriends are sisters and that the fight broke out at Fulkerson’s residence in Littleville, Alabama. People had gathered to watch the game in which unbeaten, top-ranked LSU defeated Alabama, 46-41, in Tuscaloosa.
Court records obtained by AL.com say that Fulkerson, a 31-year old from Tuscumbia, Ala., was cheering for Alabama and Merritt was cheering for LSU. When Merritt called a football player an expletive, Fulkerson thought he had said it to him and grabbed his gun,
Fulkerson’s defense attorney has claimed that the shooting was in self defense, evidenced by a black eye he suffered. However, one witness told authorities that she watched Fulkerson hit himself in the face. .
