Barney Simms, 70, was found dead in the front yard of his southwest Atlanta home on Connally Drive on the afternoon of Saturday, April 9, 2016. A retired Atlanta Housing Authority employee and long-time community leader, Simms was shot twice in the back. His death devastated neighbors who remembered his years of local service and his decision to remain in the neighborhood despite rising crime.

Investigators released surveillance from a Waffle House on Virginia Avenue showing Simms dining with a young man hours before the killing. The individual was identified as 17-year-old Eric Banks Jr., who was taken into custody five days after Simms was found. Banks confessed that the encounter had been a robbery that escalated to murder; Simms’s car, wallet, and a television were taken, fraudulent charges were made with his bank card, and the stolen vehicle was recovered in Banks’s neighborhood.

In November 2017 Eric Banks Jr., then 18, pleaded guilty to malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault and received a 35-year prison sentence without parole.