When Ja’ron Acklin’s family hadn’t heard from him for several days, they asked The Barclay at Dunwoody Apartments to check on him Monday.

A maintenance worker made a grisly discovery.

“The maintenance man said that when he entered that his hands was tied behind his back and he was not alive,” Denise Blount Goggans, the 24-year-old man’s aunt, told Channel 2 Action News. “He was dead.”

Dunwoody police Officer Trey Nelson said the death at the complex on Barclay Drive was being investigated as suspicious.

“We’re investigating the death and the medical examiner’s office has been called in for cause and manner,” Nelson told Channel 2.

Relatives said Acklin was a single father to a 2-year-old daughter. “He was a good father to his kid, a good nephew to me,” Goggans said.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to conatact Det. B. Yeargin at (678) 382-6916 or william.yeargin@dunwoodyga.gov. Tips also can be submitted to www.dunwoodypolice.com or www.crimestoppersatlanta.org, or text via TIPSOFT program, www.crimereports.com. Each of these methods is confidential, encrypted, and completely anonymous, the authorities said.

— Please return to AJC.com for updates.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

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