Amid all the anguish surrounding the loss of his younger brother, killed one year ago outside a Dunwoody day care facility, Steve Sneiderman finds himself revisiting one basic question.
"Our family has lost its brightest light and we don't know why," he said.
Steve Sneiderman and his parents are pinning their hopes on the legal system, praying for justice and at least some form of closure.
"We need to have a complete investigation, we need to have a public accounting of the results of that investigation and we need punishment for the people involved," the 45-year-old attorney said.
Hemy Neuman, who formerly supervised Rusty Sneiderman's widow, Andrea, at GE Energy, has acknowledged, through his attorneys, fatally shooting the Dunwoody entrepreneur.
Neuman changed his plea in September from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity, with his attorneys saying the east Cobb engineer was unable to differentiate between right and wrong. His trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 13.
Sneiderman's parents, brother and sister-in-law all plan to attend. They spoke publicly for the first time earlier this week with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It's going to be awful, but it's something we have to do," Steve Sneiderman said. "We know we can't go on until we get past this trial. And somebody needs to be there for Rusty."
Don and Marilyn Sneiderman still expect to hear their youngest son's voice whenever the phone rings. Though they lived some 700 miles away, Rusty spoke with his parents almost every day by video conference call. The Sneidermans said he didn't want them to be strangers to their grandchildren, Ian and Sophia.
"He wanted us to be involved in their lives," said Don Sneiderman, a retired accountant. "That was very important to him."
Time has yet to heal their wounds. Rusty's friends from high school stop by to visit, and that helps, say his parents. But there's no replacing that infectious personality.
"There's undeniable rage still about how this could happen," Steve Sneiderman told the AJC earlier this week. He lives near his parents in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. "Then there's an almost constant state of disbelief. I'll be driving in the car and I'll hear a song and it just hits me.
"I have to remind myself, what would Rusty want me to do?" he said. "He'd want me to live."
Rusty Sneiderman didn't know a stranger. That set him apart from his more reserved parents and brother. Despite an age gap of about eight years, Rusty shadowed his older brother, insisting on being included in pickup basketball games with the older boys.
"Whatever Steve did Rusty wanted to do better," their mother, Marilyn Sneiderman, said.
They were both editors of their high school newspaper in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Rusty's journalism teacher remained close to him until his death.
"I never had a student quite like Rusty," said Lois Cooper Lichtenstein, who taught for 18 years.
When he was a Rhodes Scholar candidate at the University of Indiana, he called up his old teacher for help. After she helped edit his copy, Lichtenstein received a bouquet of red roses thanking her.
"I can't quite express what an understanding person he was," she said.
Stories of Rusty's thoughtfulness abound. When he discovered his niece was autistic, he read everything he could about the disorder. His involvement didn't end when he moved to Dunwoody a little more than a decade ago and served on the board of the Georgia chapter of the Autism Society of America.
Rusty was always eager to help, his brother said. He even tried to aid Neuman.
According to emails obtained by the AJC, about three months before the shooting, Andrea Sneiderman arranged for her spouse to have lunch with Neuman, her boss, who wanted out of GE Energy. The two swapped collegial emails after their meeting, and Sneiderman forwarded Neuman’s resume to potential contacts, referring to the east Cobb engineer as “my friend.”
Steve Sneiderman and his father came face-to-face with Neuman during a hearing in August. They had met him once before while sitting shivah at the Sneidermans' Dunwoody home after the funeral. Neuman introduced himself and offered condolences.
"There's a part of me that wants to put [Neuman] in a box and throw him off a cliff and never deal with him again," Steve Sneiderman said. "And there's another part of me that wants to confront him and I haven't really sorted that out."
"He should know what he did, and how he cheated us and Rusty's kids," he said.
The family has grown closer in their pain, proof, they believe, that Rusty's spirit remains with them.
"He would've liked that," said sister-in-law Lisa Sneiderman, 43. "Family was so important to him."
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