ATLANTA — Wednesday marks one year in the baffling, Atlanta shooting death of a 12-year-old boy.
On Feb. 9, 2021, David Mack disappeared, after saying he was going to visit a friend. The next day, his body was found at the edge of some woods near his home.
One year later, Atlanta Police and David’s grieving family are sure there is someone out there who could come forward to help them find out who shot and killed him, and why.
No one who knows is talking; there are no hints emerging of the secret.
“We’re not even close to finding anyone,” David’s grandmother, Glenda Mack, said on Monday.
Atlanta Police Homicide Detective Scott Demeester said on Tuesday, “We feel that there are people out there that know what happened.”
Who killed 12-year-old David Mack, along the woods a short walk from his home near John A. White Park in southwest Atlanta?
Glenda Mack could only shrug her shoulders as she wept.
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll never get an answer,” she said.
Glenda reared David from a baby. She said she constantly re-lives that afternoon, "Thinking, thinking, thinking about what I could have done."
She was driving home, and was a few minutes away, when David called her from their porch.
The family’s front-door video shows him calling her; it is the last-known video of him.
David told her he was going to go visit a friend, to play football.
He left the house, but he never arrived at his friend’s.
Glenda filed a missing person report that evening with Atlanta Police. Members of David’s large, close-knit family searched for him all night and into the following afternoon.
Early in the afternoon of Feb. 10, 2021, they found his body face-down along the concrete slope of Utoy Creek, behind the large back-yards of homes on Shirley Street in southwest Atlanta.
The Fulton County Medical Examiner later confirmed that someone had beaten David, and shot him six times.
The family’s home videos show David the way they remember him, boisterous, outgoing, and loving to make everyone laugh. He would have turned 13 on Feb. 19, 2021.
Atlanta Police Homicide Commander Ralph Woolfolk said investigators continue to work numerous leads.
“We do have hope that we will continue to move this case in the right direction,” Lt. Woolfolk said on Tuesday. “There are several items of evidentiary value that we think can help move the investigation forward. The team has been working just in a relentless capacity pertaining to this investigation.”
There were a total of 158 homicides in Atlanta in 2021. Woolfolk pointed out that Atlanta Police have one of the highest rates of solving homicides in the country.
“It is not a day that goes by that we don’t think about families who have lost loved ones in our city,” he said.
Maj. Carlo Peek, the Major Crimes Commander, said the process involves "putting together events that happened once he disappeared, who was he with, who did he speak with. I think when we can put all of those pieces of the puzzle together, we possibly can come to some type of resolution in solving this case."
Maj. Peek and Homicide Detective Scott Demeester--Det. Demeester recently helped solve the 1995 rape and murder of 14-year-old Nacole Smith--said it’s been tough getting people who might have information to come forward and talk about David’s case.
“I find it hard to believe that there’s not somebody out there in the community that does not know what happened to him,” Demeester said. “And hopefully they’ll call us to, hopefully, be able to allow us to go to the family and make that phone call, and be able to tell them what happened to their loved one, that’s the ultimate goal.”
Ms. Mack said she is impatient for tipsters to come forward, and is disappointed and frustrated that police have not arrested anyone yet.
The killer or killers "brutalized my son,” she said. “I’ll probably never know why they did it, and I’ll have to just settle for who did it. They’re horrible, horrible people. They have no conscience, no conscience.”
One year later, there is some comfort, she said, in what she does know: "He’s not suffering any more.”
Crime Stoppers Atlanta is offering a $10,000 reward in the case, to help police catch David Mack’s killer.
People can contact Crime Stoppers on-line, or by calling 404-577-8477. They can leave tips anonymously and qualify for the reward.