They all pleaded for resolution: his mother, his friends, his neighbors. But five months later, the death of 28-year-old Earl English remains unsolved.
“No leads,” DeKalb County police spokeswoman Shiera Campbell said Tuesday.
English was found in mid-May shot dead in his home outside Decatur, with a plastic bag over his head. In the home, police found cupboards in the kitchen open and things scattered through multiple rooms. But it isn't clear, at least not in public police statements, what someone would want from English.
Whoever killed him left a TV still playing and his two cars, a 2011 Dodge Charger and a 2015 Chevrolet Camaro, in the driveway.
“I don’t see why anyone would want to cause harm to him, let alone take his life,” friend Tubyous Hawes told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the days after the killing. “He was the type of person if you knew him you loved him.”
English and Hawes were close enough people called them “Frick and Frack.” They went to clubs and parties, talked off and on every day and played spades.
In the hours before his death, English called Hawes and chatted about plans for a card game. They left some details unsorted and English said he’d call back.
He didn’t.
He also didn’t call his mother.
No one could reach him on social media, a rarity for a social type like English.
Then he didn’t show up to work.
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Co-workers and Hawes went to the house near I-285 on Northbrand Drive to check on him.
They couldn’t get in and called police.
Officers found the door jammed, with the body slumped against the inside of it.
The friend and co-workers had been told to stay back, but Hawes could see the officers react to the sight of the body.
“That just solidified what I was thinking,” Hawes said.
Anyone with information on the case can call Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477.
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