DeAndre Houston, a 29-year-old African American male, was killed late on January 7, 2021, after what should have been an ordinary night out in downtown Atlanta turned into one of the city’s first homicides of the new year. Police said officers were called to Encore Hookah Bar and Bistro on Luckie Street just before midnight and found Houston lying unresponsive in the street with a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
In the early reporting, witnesses described a dark-colored vehicle pulling up outside the lounge, a passenger getting out, opening fire, and then fleeing, leaving Houston in the roadway as the neighborhood’s nightlife carried on around the shock of what had just happened.
As the case developed, investigators came to believe Houston had been approached by three people riding in a stolen Nissan before one of them shot him. Surveillance images released weeks later focused attention on two men seen near the scene, men police said they wanted to identify and question. For Houston’s family, the public search for answers became a long and painful ritual. His mother, Kischa Houston, repeatedly spoke about the loss of her only son, remembering his smile, his hugs, and the life he had been building as a car salesman, homeowner, and college graduate. Over time, the reward money grew, first to encourage tips and later to a family-backed total of $20,000, a sign of how long the silence around the killing had lasted.
For years, the case remained unsolved in the public eye. Reporting in 2023 and 2024 said there had still been no closure and no publicly announced arrest, even as police continued to work the file and Houston’s family marked each anniversary with renewed pleas for justice. The killing also became part of the larger story surrounding the now-closed Encore nightclub, a place later tied in news coverage to repeated violent incidents in the area.
Then came a significant break. According to an Atlanta Police Department arrest update posted on December 9, 2025, Kmauri Burnett was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals in Duluth, Minnesota, on December 5, 2025, in connection with Houston’s killing. Police said Burnett was charged with murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and conspiracy to commit a crime, and that he was awaiting extradition to Atlanta. Based on the sources located, that is the clearest public arrest development in the case. I did not find reliable online reporting showing a trial, conviction, or final court outcome beyond that arrest update.
