None of this makes sense to Phillip Lamar Davis’ sister.
On Saturday, DeKalb County authorities arrested a Snellville man on a murder charge, accusing him of killing Davis in a what a tipster called a hit job.
Warrants allege Jose Luis Marquez-Colon, 32, agreed to kill the 47-year-old Gulf War veteran over an unpaid drug debt. Marquez-Colon and two other men, all wearing black military garb and masks, allegedly descended on the Stone Mountain-area home on Sept. 1.
Davis’s sister, who asked to only be identified as T. Davis because the other suspects haven’t been arrested, said she never knew her brother to have enemies or to use drugs.
“He wasn’t a drug addict,” she said. “I’ve never even seen him taking a Tylenol.”
She said her brother served in the U.S. Army in Iraq while she was finishing high school. Though he had disabled veteran status, he still got around OK and did what he could to help family and friends.
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When his sister’s teenage son started acting like a teenage son, Uncle Phillip would call and talk to him. Over the years, when she needed help getting Christmas together at her house, her brother would be there.
It seemed unreal when she learned of the masked men barging into his home, on Mountain Oaks Parkway, in a typically calm neighborhood.
The warrants lay out the scene, as captured on a surveillence camara:
Early in the morning, the assailants emerged from a car and went to the side of the house to wait. One had an AR-15.
At 6 a.m., the victim and his wife opened the garage door and the men appeared. Phillip Davis started fighting one man.
Another shot him, but the vet kept fighting.
The suspect later identified as Marquez-Colon allegedly shot Phillip Davis in the gut. The husband and wife then fled inside and called 911.
Locked out of the house, Marquez-Colon took off his mask and “is clearly visible in the video looking for something and kicking the door,” the warrant said.
A few days later, police got an anonymous tip about the hit.
Police found Marquez-Colon’s Facebook page, which includes a photo of him wearing the same jacket shown on Davis’s security camera, the warrant said.
He remains in the DeKalb County jail without bond.
T. Davis intends to follow the case closely. She remains incredulous about her brother taking drugs or owing money for them, but wants to see where the evidence leads.
“All of it is shocking,” she said.
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