Shamarco Moore’s strongest-looking legal point is also the one most likely to be overstated: he is reported to be Kingston Thomas’s uncle, and Alabama’s second-degree kidnapping statute gives certain relatives an affirmative defense when the taking is done without deadly force and for the sole purpose of assuming lawful control of the child.[1] That matters in the legal issues surrounding the Enterprise abduction case, where the suspect remained at large as of July 23, 2026, but it does not answer them.
The public facts are narrow and important. AL.com reported that 2-year-old Kingston was abducted from a babysitter in Enterprise around 4:30 p.m. on July 22, 2026, that an AMBER Alert was issued, that the vehicle connected to the alert was later located, and that Kingston was found safe in Montgomery on July 23 while Moore remained at large.[2] WTVY likewise reported that the toddler was found safe in Montgomery and that the uncle remained at large.[3]
Those details do more legal work than the family label. A child taken from a babysitter is not the same fact pattern as a parent picking up a child during a disputed exchange. No public report has identified a custody order, guardianship order, parental consent, or any other legal source of authority giving Moore control over Kingston. If those facts exist, they would matter. On the record available July 23, 2026, they have not surfaced.
The Defense Is Real, But It Has Three Gates
Alabama Code §13A-6-44 defines kidnapping in the second degree and then creates a specific affirmative defense. The defense applies where the defendant is a relative of the person abducted, the defendant’s sole purpose is to assume lawful control of that person, and the defendant does not accomplish the abduction by force or threat of deadly force.[1] The statute also places the burden of injecting that issue on the defendant, while making clear that this does not shift the state’s ultimate burden of proof.[1]
That structure is easy to miss in a live missing-child case. The defense is not a free-standing exemption for relatives. It is a statutory sorting rule. A qualifying relative who acts without deadly force still has to explain why the act was aimed solely at lawful control. If the evidence points instead to concealment, retaliation, pressure on a caregiver or parent, flight from lawful authority, or some mixed purpose not grounded in legal authority over the child, the defense loses its center.
| Statutory question | Public record as of July 23, 2026 | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Is Moore a relative of Kingston? | Public reports identify Moore as Kingston’s uncle. | This is the prong most favorable to Moore on the current record. |
| Was deadly force used or threatened? | No public source cited in the research materials reports deadly force. | The absence of a reported deadly-force allegation keeps the defense available for analysis, at least at this stage. |
| Was Moore’s sole purpose to assume lawful control? | Kingston was reportedly taken from a babysitter, and no public custody order or parental-consent fact has emerged. | This is the prong most likely to defeat the defense unless undisclosed facts change the record. |
Relative Status Gets Moore Through the Door
The first prong should not be made harder than it is. If Moore is Kingston’s uncle, he is a family member in the ordinary sense, and the public reporting consistently identifies him that way.[2][3] The open questions are narrower: whether he is a maternal or paternal uncle, whether he ever had any caretaking arrangement, and whether any parent had authorized him to take the child that day. The reports do not answer those questions.
That uncertainty does not erase the defense. It means a defense lawyer, if Moore is apprehended and charged, would likely start by preserving §13A-6-44(b) rather than conceding the state’s preferred frame. The statute itself invites that move. It does not say “parent.” It says “relative.”[1]
But the word “relative” is not the charge’s off-switch. It only opens the statutory inquiry. The harder question is whether Moore can connect his relationship to a legally recognizable right to control Kingston’s whereabouts at the time of the taking.
The Deadly-Force Prong Is Probably Not the Fight
The second prong also appears, for now, to favor Moore. None of the cited public reports says he used or threatened deadly force during the alleged abduction.[2][3] That is not the same as proof that no force occurred. It is only a statement about the public record. Prosecutors may have witness statements, surveillance, dispatch records, or later interviews that have not been released.
If the state later alleges a deadly-force threat, the statutory defense changes shape immediately. But on the public facts now available, prosecutors do not need that allegation to resist the family-member defense. They have a more direct answer: even a nonviolent taking by a relative must still be for the sole purpose of assuming lawful control.
“Lawful Control” Is Where the Defense Narrows
The phrase “sole purpose to assume lawful control” is doing the real work. It asks two things at once: what was Moore trying to do, and was the control he sought lawful? The first question goes to purpose. The second goes to authority.
A relative can sincerely believe he is acting in a child’s interest and still lack lawful control. Criminal statutes do not usually turn on a family member’s private sense that he had a better plan for the child. For this defense to do more than create argument, Moore would need facts tying his conduct to lawful authority: a custody order, a guardianship arrangement, parental permission, a documented emergency caretaking role, or some other legally cognizable basis for removing Kingston from the person watching him.
The reported starting point cuts against him. Kingston was allegedly taken from a babysitter, not from a stranger in a parking lot and not during a publicly documented custody exchange.[2] A babysitter’s authority may be temporary, practical, and delegated, but it is still authority from someone. Removing a 2-year-old from that caregiver without known parental consent is the fact that keeps pushing this case out of the comfortable “family dispute” category and back into the criminal statute.
The word “sole” also matters. It leaves little room for mixed motives. If evidence showed that Moore took Kingston to pressure a parent, avoid law enforcement, punish a caregiver, or conceal the child’s location, the defense would be weaker even if Moore had some family connection. The available public reporting does not establish any of those motives. It also does not establish the lawful-control motive the statute requires.
That is why the child’s safe recovery, while obviously the best fact in the case for Kingston and his family, does not end the criminal analysis. Safe recovery may affect charging judgment, bond arguments, plea posture, and sentencing advocacy. It does not itself prove that the original taking was lawful or that Moore’s sole purpose met §13A-6-44(b).
Who Has to Raise the Defense
The burden language is procedural but practical. Section 13A-6-44(b) says the burden of injecting the issue is on the defendant, while preserving the state’s burden of proof.[1] In a courtroom, that means Moore would not simply point at the word “uncle” and require dismissal. He would need enough evidence to put the statutory defense in play.
The state, in turn, would not have to disprove every imaginable family-law theory before filing or pursuing a second-degree kidnapping charge. It would have to prove the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt, and if the defense is properly injected, deal with the statutory issue as part of the case. The immediate prosecution question is therefore not whether Moore has any argument. He does. The question is whether he has evidence.
That evidence could come from places the public has not seen: text messages with a parent, prior caregiving routines, juvenile or domestic-relations orders, witness statements from the babysitter, or communications after the AMBER Alert. Those facts could change the analysis sharply. Without them, the defense remains plausible enough to discuss and too thin to rely on.
Why Prosecutors May Stay With Second-Degree Kidnapping
Second-degree kidnapping is the natural statutory frame on the public facts because it captures abduction without requiring the additional aggravating purposes that make first-degree kidnapping a different offense. General Alabama kidnapping commentary describes the first-degree offense as involving abduction with aggravating objectives, while second-degree kidnapping covers abduction that does not rise to that level.[4]
While Moore remains at large, prosecutors have reason to avoid charging by atmosphere. They may not yet have a full statement from the suspect, a complete account of how Kingston moved from Enterprise to Montgomery, or enough evidence to prove an aggravating purpose beyond the taking itself. A second-degree theory leaves room to prosecute the alleged abduction while continuing to develop facts.
It also forces the defense to show its hand on lawful control. If Moore is arrested, a defense lawyer may try to inject §13A-6-44(b) early in bond litigation, preliminary proceedings, or plea negotiations. Prosecutors would then look for the hinge facts: Who placed Kingston with the babysitter? Did any parent approve Moore taking him? Was there a custody order? Did Moore communicate an emergency reason? Did he conceal Kingston’s location after the alert? Did he know law enforcement was looking for him?
The vehicle detail matters here only as a piece of case development, not as a substitute for statutory proof. AL.com reported that the vehicle connected with the alert was located and that the vehicle description changed during the alert process.[2] That may help investigators reconstruct movement and timing. It does not, by itself, answer whether Moore had lawful control.
The AMBER Alert is similar. Federal DOJ guidance lists recommended criteria for issuing AMBER Alerts, including a reasonable belief that an abduction has occurred and that the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death.[5] Family involvement does not make an alert legally odd; family abductions are a known category. Readers who want the alert-law mechanics can start with the AMBER Alert procedures explainer. For this case, the alert mainly confirms that authorities treated the taking as urgent, not that the kidnapping charge is automatically proved.
National data also warn against assuming “family” means low risk. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports that 59% of 2023 AMBER Alerts were family abduction cases.[6] That figure is about alert patterns, not conviction rates and not the merits of Moore’s defense. Its value is more modest: it shows why law enforcement does not treat a relative suspect as a reason to stand down.
What Would Change If the Case Became First-Degree
The family-member defense analyzed here belongs to the second-degree kidnapping statute.[1] If prosecutors later pursue a first-degree kidnapping theory, the subsection (b) defense would not travel with the case in the same way. The fight would shift to whether the state can prove the additional elements required for first-degree kidnapping.
That would be a serious escalation in both law and leverage. Alabama’s felony sentencing statute sets the Class B felony range at not more than 20 years or less than 2 years, and the Class A felony range at life or not more than 99 years or less than 10 years.[7] Second-degree kidnapping is treated as the Class B exposure in this analysis; a first-degree theory would move the case into the Class A range.[7]
The temptation in a child-abduction case is to let fear fill evidentiary gaps. Prosecutors do not get to do that. If they elevate, they need facts that fit the higher statute, not just a worse feeling about the same conduct. On the other side, the defense does not get to turn a child’s safe recovery into retroactive permission. Each side has a statutory problem to solve.
If Moore were arrested outside Alabama, the next visible phase could involve warrants, custody transfer, and extradition issues. That process is separate from whether §13A-6-44(b) ultimately helps him. For readers tracking the mechanics of interstate enforcement after an arrest, the UIFSA warrant-and-extradition discussion offers a procedural comparison, though the underlying subject matter is different.
The Missing Facts Are Not Technicalities
The unresolved facts are not background color. They decide whether the family-member defense is a live trial issue or only a preliminary argument. A custody order would be different from a casual family practice. A parent’s contemporaneous permission would be different from after-the-fact sympathy. A documented emergency would be different from a unilateral decision to take a toddler from a babysitter.
Nor should the analysis import unverified character claims. The materials do not establish Moore’s criminal history, substance-use history, or motive. Those gaps may be frustrating in a fast-moving case, but they are legally useful because they keep the focus where it belongs: the reported taking, the child’s recovery, the suspect’s at-large status, and the statutory defense Moore would have to inject if charged.
There is also no published Alabama appellate decision in the supplied materials that squarely answers this pattern: an uncle allegedly taking a 2-year-old from a non-parental caregiver, with no public custody order identified. That absence does not make the statute unknowable. It means the best analysis is textual and provisional.
A comparison to federal kidnapping law would only underline the point. State-law defenses can be unusually specific, and Alabama’s family-member clause is one of those provisions that changes the second-degree analysis without becoming a general license for relatives. Readers comparing state and federal kidnapping frameworks can look to the Shasta-Trinity federal kidnapping statute analysis.
A Provisional Statutory Judgment
On the public facts available on July 23, 2026, Moore could plausibly raise Alabama’s family-member defense far enough to force attention to §13A-6-44(b). The first prong appears to help him because he is reported to be Kingston’s uncle. The second prong does not currently appear to block him because no cited public report alleges deadly force. The third prong is the problem.
Taking a 2-year-old from a babysitter, with no publicly known custody order or parental-consent fact, is difficult to square with a sole purpose to assume lawful control. Undisclosed facts could change that. On the present record, the defense is probably not a clean shield. It is a fact-development problem for Moore, and one prosecutors should be ready to answer without pretending that family status is irrelevant.
References
- Section 13A-6-44 - Kidnapping in the second degree, WomensLaw.
- AMBER Alert issued for 2-year-old boy abducted in Enterprise, AL.com, July 2026.
- Enterprise toddler found safe in Montgomery, uncle still at-large, WTVY, July 23, 2026.
- The Crime of Kidnapping in Alabama, Joe Ingram Law, March 2025.
- Guidelines for Issuing AMBER Alerts, Office of Justice Programs.
- Family Abduction, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
- Alabama Code Title 13A. Criminal Code § 13A-5-6, FindLaw.