It took more than 18 months and the testimony of a frightened woman for authorities to find the body of 30-year-old Carnita Chick.
Her remains were discovered Sept. 11, 2015, in the woods beside an apartment complex in College Park, not far from where prosecutors said she was stabbed and strangled all those months before. The sole witness to the murder, Chick’s friend, did not come forward until she gathered the courage to leave an abusive relationship.
It was her sworn statement, according to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, that eventually led police to Chick’s body and resulted in the conviction of her former boyfriend. Anthony Allen Barber was found guilty Tuesday of felony murder and aggravated assault in Chick’s 2014 death.
He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Chick was spending time at her friend’s Godby Road apartment on the night she was killed, sometime in late January or early February of 2014. According to prosecutors, Barber did not approve of his girlfriend’s friendship with Chick, and the evening ended in violence.
Barber stabbed Chick with a knife and then snapped her neck to ensure her death, a spokesperson for District Attorney Fani Willis said in a news release. Barber also threatened to kill his girlfriend before grabbing a blue tarp from one of the windows in their apartment, wrapping Chick’s body in it, and dumping it in the woods, the spokesperson said.
It wasn’t until April, when Barber was jailed on a domestic violence charge, that his girlfriend felt safe enough to report the murder to police. The woman had been beaten before, and she feared for her life, prosecutors said. She was not charged in Chick’s death.
Chick was still considered a missing person until an Atlanta police officer uncovered her skeletal remains the following year.
“The defendant, in this case, chose to violently end the life of another human being and discarded her like trash for the sole reason of disliking her,” Willis said in a statement. “My heart goes out to Carnita Chick’s loved ones who waited for answers for years, and I can only hope that this conviction provides them some sense of closure.”
— Staff writer Caroline Silva contributed to this article.
About the Author
