Ronald Lamar Green, a 29-year-old man from Marietta, was killed on July 16, 2020, in a sudden burst of gunfire outside Cumberland Marketplace in Smyrna, where he and his friend Clifton “Casey” Emmert had been sitting inside Green’s green 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis. It was early evening, just before 6 p.m., in the parking lot of a busy shopping center near The Battery, the kind of public place where people expect traffic and noise but not an execution-style attack. Investigators said the shooting was ambush-style, with the gunman closing in on the car and opening fire as the two men sat inside. Green died that day, and his obituary later placed him back in the context of ordinary life, describing him as a native and lifelong resident of Cobb County who was loved by family and friends.
In the first days after the killings, police said they were still piecing together what had led to the attack. The public details painted a scene that felt chillingly deliberate: two friends in a parked car, a gunman appearing and fleeing almost as quickly as he arrived, and investigators warning that the person responsible was dangerous. Authorities said they had not settled on a motive, and early reporting made clear that, even while police believed the shooting appeared isolated, they were urgently trying to identify the man responsible.
As the case developed, investigators released surveillance images and a physical description of the suspect. According to law enforcement, the shooter was described as a thinly built Black male with short dreads in a twist style, wearing a red hooded sweatshirt with white stripes, black fitted jeans, a medical face mask, and red-and-white sneakers. Police said he ran from the scene and fled in a dark gray newer-model Toyota Camry with a “tag applied for” license plate. Those details gave the public a clearer picture of the person they were hunting, but not a name, and for all the specificity of the clothing and getaway vehicle, the identity of the gunman remained out of reach in the reporting that followed.
No public reports located in the available news coverage and official FBI posting show an arrest, indictment, or conviction in Green’s killing. Instead, the case continued to be circulated as an open homicide investigation, and the FBI’s ViCAP page for Ronald Green and Clifton Emmert was still publicly listed and soliciting tips, a sign that authorities were still seeking information rather than announcing that the case had been solved. So the story that remains in the public record is one of an apparently targeted double killing carried out in plain view, followed by years of unanswered questions, a named suspect only by description, and no publicly documented arrest to close the case.
