Billy Joe Favors was 27 when an attempted robbery in northwest Atlanta on December 13, 2016, ended with him fatally shot. Favors and an acquaintance, Cornelius Edwards, arranged to meet two men, Marvin Goodman and Delvin Phillips, under the pretense of a marijuana sale at an apartment on Holly Street. According to reports, Favors entered armed and a gunfight broke out after Phillips produced his own weapon. Phillips survived wounds to his arm and chest; Favors was shot in the chest and arm and died at the scene.

Edwards did not fire the fatal shot but was arrested and tried under Georgia’s felony-murder rule for organizing the armed robbery. A recorded phone call in which Edwards acknowledged planning the robbery was introduced at trial. In 2018 a Fulton County jury convicted Edwards of felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and criminal attempt to commit armed robbery; he received life plus five years and the Georgia Supreme Court later affirmed those convictions on appeal.

Did anyone in Atlanta at the time have information about the Holly Street meeting or the lead-up to that December 13 encounter?