DEL.ICIO.USTeen slain outside studio was hardworking, ‘much loved’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Taylora Sanders understands why her son, 19-year-old Adair Freeman, was on the street during the early morning hours Saturday.
It was part of his job. Freeman worked at his father’s recording studio in midtown Atlanta and had run an errand to a nearby convenience store.
Family photo
‘He was a fun person to be around,’ Taylora Sanders said of her son, Adair Freeman.
But she doesn’t know why anybody would want to kill her son.
“We don’t know exactly what happened,” Sanders said Sunday at her Snellville home, “but we want to find out.”
Atlanta police are working the killing as a robbery. Investigators said Freeman left Hot Beats Studio on Spring Street and walked a few yards to a 24-hour convenience store to buy a bag of ice. At about 1:40 a.m. Saturday, on the way back to the studio, he was shot at least twice while he was in the parking lot, police said.
Freeman’s dad, Russell Freeman, owns the recording studio. A Web site for the studio says clients include Matchbox 20, Lil Wayne, Nelly, Collective Soul and Lil Scrappy.
Sanders said her son left for the studio, where he worked every weekend, about 8:45 p.m. Friday. She got a call about five hours later from Russell Freeman with news their son was dead.
“He was a fun person to be around,” she said of her son. “He always wanted to make people laugh. Every time you’d see him, he was always smiling. He lived life to the fullest. He was much-loved and so handsome.”
Fellow studio worker Deron Hardaway said he talked to Adair at 11:23 p.m. Friday.
“He was quiet and hard-working and had no enemies,” Hardaway said. “He was just trying to make it in the music industry. His talent was really growing and I could see him taking the music world by storm.”
Hardaway said the crime itself is shocking in an area that boasts two music studios and a comedy club.
“I never felt any bad energy there,” he said. “There was no crime, I felt safe there. I’ve done many runs to that same store for recording artists and have never been harassed or bothered.”
Hardaway thinks the shooter mistook Adair Freeman for a wealthy musician because he dressed nice and wore expensive jewelry. He wonders why there is so much violence in Atlanta.
“I wonder what is really going on here,” he said. “Then it hits close to home and you’re like, ‘Wow.’ We have to put a stop to it.”
Adair Freeman attended high schools in Gwinnett County and Tucker but never graduated.
“He always intended to graduate or get his GED because that’s what his granddaddy wanted him to do,” she said.
Russell Freeman is making funeral arrangements but did not want to comment on the shooting, Sanders said.
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