A couple of months before someone gunned him down at a DeKalb County gas station, musician Andrew Spencer told his girlfriend something — as if he knew the end was near.
“He told me, ‘If I was to pass away, I want you to know I lived real happy with you,’” Danise Coicou told Channel 2 Action News. “And I said, ‘Why [are] you talking like that?’ He said, ‘I just want you to know because people don’t let you know how they [feel about] you and later on you wonder if they were happy.’”
As police continued to search Friday for the person who shot and killed Spencer outside a Chamblee QuikTrip, Coicou said she could not understand why anyone would want to harm the love of her life.
“He was a great person,” she said. “He always tried to make everybody laugh.”
Spencer, 30, had just left Follies strip club with friend Quintin Heard when they stopped at the QuikTrip in the 4000 block of Buford Highway for gas.
A man at the gas station hot dog stand didn’t know where the buns were, Heard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Spencer got in front of the man to assist him.
“And the guy, I guess, took it the wrong way,” Heard said.
The man waited for Heard and Spencer outside the gas station and later fired shots at them, Heard said.
Police said the shooter and an accomplice then sped off in a gray or green Maserati Quattroporte.
A Chamblee police officer heard the gunshots, Capt. Ernesto Ford said. But he followed the wrong car from the scene.
When he realized that car was not involved in the shooting, the officer returned to QuikTrip and found Spencer “with massive trauma to his upper chest,” Ford said.
Heard said his friend was barely breathing.
“And I held him in my arms until he took his last breath,” he said.
Spencer’s boss knew something was wrong when he failed to show up for work Thursday at a warehouse in south Fulton County, Channel 2 reported.
“Andrew, if he’s running late, calls in,” Jahmar Baptiste said.
Although Spencer worked at a warehouse, he loved music and had recently started his own label, Coicou told Channel 2. Spencer went by the name “Velate.”
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Coicou said she was devastated by Spencer’s death.
“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to function,” she said.
Police recovered video footage and photos of the people they believe were involved in the shooting.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Chamblee police at 770-986-5005 or 470-395-2413.
