Ava Walters was staying in a Montgomery hotel being used as overflow student housing when police found her dead from strangulation.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A Montgomery hotel pressed into service as temporary housing for Alabama State University students became the center of a murder case after 20-year-old sophomore Ava Walters was found dead there, drawing police attention to a space that was both a commercial property and, for students, a temporary college residence.
Emergency personnel were sent shortly before 11 a.m. Aug. 23 to the 1600 block of Interstate Park Drive, where the university had arranged student accommodations. Officers found Walters unresponsive inside the property and she was pronounced dead. Police later arrested her boyfriend, Jalil Bivens of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and charged him with murder. An autopsy determined Walters died from manual strangulation, according to testimony later given in court by a homicide detective.
Alabama State had rented a block of rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn while construction on university residence space was being completed, investigators testified. That made the property an unusual extension of campus life: students slept, studied and kept their belongings in hotel rooms even though the building was not a conventional dormitory. Police and university officials described the location as an off-campus facility connected with student housing. Walters was among the students staying there when the fatal encounter occurred.
The university initially announced only that a student had died at an off-campus facility and that the investigation had been turned over to the Montgomery Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division. The school later identified Walters as a second-year health information management major from Fort Lauderdale. Police then announced that Bivens, also from the Fort Lauderdale area, had been arrested on a murder charge. Authorities have not publicly identified a motive.
How Bivens arrived at Walters’ temporary residence became clearer during a later court hearing. A homicide detective testified that Bivens told investigators he drove from South Florida to Montgomery on the night before Walters died. He said the trip was intended as a surprise. Once he reached Montgomery, according to the detective, he sent Walters a message telling her he was in town. Walters met him while she was with her best friend.
The three eventually went to a party, where investigators said an argument developed between Bivens and Walters’ friend over how Walters would divide her time. Police interviewed the friend and found her account of that disagreement was generally consistent with the version Bivens provided, the detective testified. Walters and Bivens later left together and returned to the hotel that was being used as her student residence.
Investigators say the most consequential dispute came the following morning. The detective testified that Bivens described a heated argument between himself and Walters before he put his hands around her neck during what he characterized as a consensual act. Bivens told investigators that when he released her, she was unconscious. His account is part of the evidence in a pending criminal prosecution and has not been accepted as fact by a jury.
The timeline afterward was reconstructed through electronic activity, witness interviews and the eventual emergency call. According to court testimony, investigators found a ChatGPT search at approximately 10:24 a.m. asking how to wake a person who had been choked unconscious. About nine minutes later, police said, Bivens placed a FaceTime call to a friend. The friend told investigators that Bivens said Walters had hit her head on a nightstand and had stopped breathing, a description that differed from the choking account later discussed in court.
According to the detective, the friend initially believed Bivens might be joking because he appeared unusually calm on the call. Investigators said Bivens then turned the camera so the friend could see Walters on the bed. The call became one of several pieces of evidence examined by police as they worked to establish what had happened in the hotel room before anyone contacted emergency services.
Police received Bivens’ call at 10:54 a.m. Dispatchers gave him CPR instructions before officers arrived, according to testimony. Walters could not be revived. Bivens was detained, advised of his Miranda rights and questioned. The detective described him in court as cooperative and said he answered investigators’ questions. Police said statements from that interview contributed to the decision to charge him with murder.
Investigators also cited physical findings that they said did not fit all parts of Bivens’ explanation. The autopsy concluded that Walters died by manual strangulation. The detective testified that Bivens had scratches on his torso and arms that investigators viewed as possible defensive wounds. Police said Walters’ injuries also were inconsistent with portions of his account. The defense has not had those assertions adjudicated at trial, and a criminal charge is not a finding of guilt.
The case soon moved from the hotel to the courthouse. Bivens appeared for an Aniah’s Law hearing, where prosecutors sought to address whether he should remain jailed without bond while the murder case was pending. The homicide detective described the investigation and Bivens’ statements. After considering the evidence, District Judge Pamela Higgins ruled that the prosecution had not met the legal standard required to deny bail completely.
Higgins set bond at $175,000 and imposed conditions that included preventing Bivens from leaving Alabama without court approval. The judge’s ruling stated that prosecutors had not shown by clear and convincing evidence that no combination of release conditions could reasonably protect the community or ensure Bivens’ appearance in court. The ruling concerned pretrial custody only and did not decide the underlying murder allegation.
For Alabama State, the death was also the loss of a student whose college life was underway in an academic program focused on health information management. President Quinton Ross Jr. extended condolences to Walters’ relatives, friends and classmates and said the broader university community was mourning with them. His statement urged members of the campus to support one another as they dealt with the death.
The hotel arrangement placed Walters’ death outside the physical boundaries of Alabama State’s traditional campus while still inside housing organized by the university. Nothing in the publicly reviewed material indicates that the temporary-housing arrangement itself caused or contributed to the homicide. The setting is significant because it explains why a college student was living in a hotel room and why university officials treated the property as part of their student-housing network.
Police have not announced a motive, and publicly available reports reviewed for this article do not identify a final resolution of the murder charge. The latest verified development located was the granting of $175,000 bond with travel restrictions. Bivens remains accused, not convicted, in Walters’ death, and the prosecution will have to prove its case in court if the charge proceeds to trial.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 17, 2026.