Atlanta musician and artist Joe Hruska had been out doing what local musicians and artists do last Friday night, taking in a few punk rock cover bands over at The Star Community Bar, a popular club in the city’s Little Five Points neighborhood. With him were good friends including Chaitanyalila Kelsey, or “Shay,” as he was known.
Not long after they left the club, sometime before 3 a.m., Hruska, 33, and Kelsey, 32, were shot to death not far away. Some people said they heard shots but apparently no one saw the attackers. The bodies of Hruska and Kelsey were found 30 feet apart.
The news rocked a neighborhood that locals call “tight-knit.”
A lot of people knew Hruska, including Rob Thompson, owner of Java Lords Coffee House on Euclid Avenue in Little Five.
“He was a neighborhood regular, a really nice guy,” said Thompson, who also was at Star Bar Friday night where he saw Hruska and Kelsey.
Hruska, he said, lived in the neighborhood. He was a painter and played music, both keyboards and guitar in different genres, and was part of the local artistic scene.
“He would do anything for anybody,” Thompson recalled, letting friends crash for the night in his apartment, for example.
Thompson said the news of the killings made him “very angry.” He noted that there had been other incidents of crime in the area including a recent mugging.
After a downturn, crime seems to be on an “uptick,” he said.
The police can’t be everywhere, he acknowledged, but Thompson said some high quality cameras in back alleys and better lighting would help.
Atlanta police said Monday that they have nothing new in the case.
Police will not say if robbery was the motive, Channel 2 Action News reported, but they are working to determine if the double murder is connected to a nearby armed robbery that occurred about the same time.
In that incident, about a mile away, two people were robbed at gunpoint of cell phones and other valuables on North Highland Ave.
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