The girlfriend of a Sandy Springs man murdered during a Craigslist transaction told Channel 2 Action News he was selling a game system to help pay the bills.
Danny Zeitz died Sept. 12 after police say 16-year-old Kayla Dixon shot him during a scuffle while trying to steal a Playstation 4 game console.
Police have also charged Dixon's boyfriend, 20-year-old Nathaniel Vivian, with murder.
“He would never sell any gaming anything for anyone,” Brit Crowder told Channel 2’s Mike Petchenik. “Because he loved me, he decided he was gonna do that.”
Crowder said the gesture speaks to the kind of person she’d been dating for nearly the last two years.
“He was a very kind guy. He took care of people,” she said. “He did things that a lot of people wouldn’t do for other people.”
The couple met while working at Lifetime Fitness in Sandy Springs. He worked the front desk. She worked in the café.
“Every day I’d walk in, he’d swipe my card and he was like, ‘Good morning! How are you?’” she said. “Apparently he had a crush on me the whole time.”
On their first date, Crowder said Zeitz picked up the tab and later revealed to her that he’d overdrawn his bank account.
“We were literally inseparable after that point,” she said. “We hung out every single day.”
Eventually, the couple moved in together with her two children from a previous marriage.
“He was becoming a really great father figure for my kids as well,” she said.
On the day of his murder, Crowder, a waitress, left Zeitz and the kids at home to head off for work.
“He’s like, ‘Baby, I love you, bye,’” she said. “He looked at me and I was like, ‘Stop being so emotional.’ I was like ‘Bye babe I’ll see you later. It’s good.’ That was the last time I saw him.”
A few hours later, Crowder said police showed up at her job and told her she needed to come home because her kids were by themselves.
It wasn’t until after she arrived that she learned that someone had found Zeitz, in his pajamas, face down in some bushes in front of their apartment building.
“At first I was really, really angry. But knowing Danny as much as I know him, I can’t hate them,” she said of the suspects. “I can’t because he wouldn’t want me to.”
Crowder said Zeitz saw the best in people and likely didn’t feel threatened by the couple, whom police said had their 16-month-old baby with them at the time.
“He didn’t think anything bad would happen because he would never do something like that to someone else,” she said.
The couple would have celebrated an anniversary just a few days after the shooting. Even in his absence, Crowder said Zeitz gave her a gift.
“To forgive the people because I don’t hate anyone,” she said. “Like, I don’t hate anyone right now. I think he’s proud of me for that. But I really don’t.”
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has indicated he plans to try Dixon as an adult.
She and Vivian have a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday, and both remain in jail without a bond.
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