It’s time to take another look for Rod and Ray, Atlanta homicide detective Vincent Velazquez told reporters Friday.
The homicide detective is hoping that after 23 years renewed publicity will bring new calls that will lead detectives to two men, believed to be named Rod and Ray who are thought to be responsible for the death of 11-year-old Jeremiah Anderson Nov. 9, 1991.
“There is no need for an 11-year-old to be a victim of such a crime,” Velazquez said. “He was doing nothing but riding his bike that night.”
Jeremiah was the only person shot when two masked men shot into a group shooting craps in a parking lot at Martin Street Plaza housing project in southeastt Atlanta that night.
The crowd scattered after two men wearing masks got out of a stolen, tricked out Mustang and began firing a 9 mm and an AK-47 at the players on Nov. 9, 1991.
Jeremiah, shot in the back, fell beside the abandoned pile of cash. “They (the gunmen) stepped over him to get the money,” Velazquez said.
The maroon-colored Mustang they drove had been reported stolen two weeks before the shooting, and it was recovered the next day in southeast Atlanta, the detective said.
The case has gone totally cold, Velazquez said. The last tip called in to Crime Stoppers was in 2007.
But in many of the tips called in years ago the names Rod and Ray were passed on.
"We feel Rod and Ray do exist," Velazquez said. "We feel there are people out there who know these people."
Velazquez said it’s doubtful the two gunmen still live in Summerhill, now an improved area between Turner Field and the Atlanta Zoo. And they “probably aren’t afraid anymore” that they will be caught, the detective said.
Jeremiah’s family had only recently moved from Mobile, Ala., to the Summerhill neighborhood in police zone three, then nicknamed “the war zone. ” Jeremiah was one of three children to be killed in one week.
When he was shot, Jeremiah, his two younger brothers and his older sister no longer lived at Martin Street Plaza, which was then known as haven for drug dealers. They had moved in with their father, who lived nearby, because their mother had recently gone to jail.
But Jeremiah came back often.
Neighbors and friends told reporters 20 years ago Jeremiah had a penchant for scalping tickets to baseball games and finding other creative ways to make money.
All the same, Velazquez said, Jeremiah was a good student at A.B. Williams Middle School.
Since Jeremiah’s death, his mother and siblings moved back to Mobile, Velazquez said, and his brothers and sisters are all successful.
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