He wasn’t where he wanted to be, but Decarlo Allen was on his way. He wanted to better himself, but his family was his priority.
Married to his college sweetheart, Allen had two children and a job with the Postal Service. He had management potential and had just passed a test, one step in the process.
Allen was delivering mail on a windy Saturday when in a matter of seconds, he was killed. Investigators believe a tree limb crashed onto Allen's mail truck and went through the roof on Shadow Rock Drive at the Mystery Valley Golf Club in Lithonia. The mail truck swerved and hit a second tree, killing Allen. He was 36.
“It just happened to be a freak act of nature,” Allen’s uncle, Nicholas Allen, said Monday. “It’s one of those things you can’t understand, and you’ve got no one to blame.”
When she got the phone call Saturday afternoon about her husband’s wreck, Kita Allen knew immediately the news was not good. It felt eerily like the deaths of her grandmother and mother. But this time, it was her husband, killed doing the job he had done so many times.
“That’s how I’m able to process it,” she said. “It’s never going to be easy. But I’m able to manage.”
Her children reacted differently, Allen said.
Daquan, 9, was especially close to his father and the two shared a striking resemblance — same eyes and smile. “D-man” is struggling to accept it, his mother said.
His 6-year-old sister Azariah, nicknamed Zaza, has found more peace.
“We have a personal angel,” the girl told her mother.
An Atlanta native, Allen was nicknamed “Snoop” as a baby because he had a slight resemblance to Snoopy from The Peanuts gang, his uncle said. The name stuck at Crim High School, where Allen played the trombone. After graduating in 1999, Allen attended Morris Brown College. And while there, he met his wife.
Kita was a student at Clark Atlanta University, and she was struck by Allen’s humble charm. He was handsome and smart, Kita Allen said, and the two were married in 2005. Two children later completed the family that called Covington home.
Last year was filled with many firsts for the Allens. Decarlo and Kita had the chance to travel, visiting beaches and a quirky Tennessee town. Five trips spent making memories together.
“Those were our first vacations, real vacations with our whole family,” Kita Allen said Monday.
Destinations included Cape San Blas in Florida, Georgia’s Jekyll Island and Gatlinburg, Tenn. Kita Allen said she’s thankful she and her children have photos and memories of those happy times.
Funeral arrangements for Allen were pending late Monday. A Go Fund Me page was created to assist the family at www.gofundme.com/DAllenFamilyFund.
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