Investigators want to know who killed a native southwest Atlanta man less than an hour after he returned home last year to visit his mother.
Gregory Smith was found shot to death the night of Aug. 7, 2010, outside his mother’s home on Campbellton Road.
No money had been stolen from him, and all of the 47-year-old’s jewelry was in place, investigators said.
The lead detective said she’s even ruled out drugs as a motive.
“It sounds like it may be a case of mistaken identity,” Atlanta homicide Detective E. Bowman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “There may have been a dispute in [nearby] Tuscon Trail Park between gang members and other individuals.”
Investigators believe one of those involved in the dispute may have looked like Smith.
Police are looking for a light-colored Honda sedan that may be the key to finding one or more culprits.
Smith’s family said his slaying is inexplicable.
“He might have said something like, ‘I’ll be right back,’” his wife Donna Smith told the AJC. “There was nothing after that.”
About 45 minutes after her husband went outside for what she believed was a cigarette break after driving to Atlanta from South Carolina, Donna Smith’s brother-in-law rushed into the house.
“I had to tell his wife he was dead,” Reggie Smith, Gregory Smith’s older brother, said.
The older Smith said he was coming to the house to see his younger brother and sister-in-law, and stopped behind two cars idling at the stop sign just up from their mother’s house on El Paso Road.
“I thought the person in the car was talking to somebody,” Reggie Smith said.
As he went to pull around the car blocking the intersection, he noticed a second car in front – his brother’s car.
“He was lying back in his seat,” Reggie Smith recalled. “I called his name, but he didn't answer.”
Reggie Smith approached his younger brother and found Gregory Smith had been shot twice in the face and once in the arm.
“I went hysterical,” Reggie Smith said.
But he remembers thinking the silver Honda was out of place.
“I saw the silver car pull into a driveway on the street, turn around and drive off,” he said. “That car had been sitting there for five minutes or more.”
The investigation quickly hit a dead end last year. But late this summer, Bowman was given the case to re-examine.
“I’m trying to follow old leads,” she said.
Gregory was the father of two adult children and was killed less than a month before his wedding anniversary, Donna Smith said.
“Sept. 1 that year would’ve made 20 years,” she said. “He was a good man.”
Reggie Smith called his 6-foot-4, 240-pound younger brother a “gentle giant.”
“He was tall, fun-loving and jovial,” Reggie Smith said. “He had a green thumb and was just a big softy.”
Gregory Smith’s family still struggles to understand how someone could kill him.
“We never owned any guns,” Donna Smith said. “It was certainly an unfair fight, if it was a fight at all.”
She said the family just wants answers.
“We’ve lived nearly 16 months with no answers, wondering who or why,” Donna Smith said. “Knowing won’t bring him back, but it will be a relief.”
Police are asking the public for help to track down Gregory Smith’s killer.
Anyone with information about what might have happened that night is asked to call Atlanta Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477 or call Bowman at 404-546-4965.
While anonymous calls are welcomed, the person who provides information that leads to an arrest may be eligible for a reward from Crime Stoppers.
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