A parking-lot dispute at a Valero on Candler Road in Decatur turned deadly just after 4:15 a.m. on April 26, 2022, when 65-year-old Ronald Tyrone Hodge was shot in the face and died at the scene. Family remember Hodge as someone who would help and stand up for others; his son says Hodge was intervening in an argument between a man and a woman when the shooting occurred. A coworker said Hodge had been laughing and joking at the station shortly before the incident.

Hodge was a brother in a large family, a former Indiana University football player, and had settled in Atlanta where he also worked at a braid shop. Authorities identified 62-year-old Jurrell Bethel of Covington as the man accused in the shooting; Bethel turned himself in the day after the killing and has been charged with malice murder and held without bond. No official motive has been released beyond that the violence appears to have arisen from the parking-lot dispute.

Did anyone see that early-morning argument at the Valero or know more about what led up to the shooting?