In the summer of 2019, a promising young artist's life was tragically cut short in a brutal and random act of violence in southwest Atlanta. Te'a Denise Liger, a 21-year-old Black queer woman, was visiting a friend at the Vista Adams Apartments on Delowe Drive on August 21st when a home invasion turned deadly. Liger, a 2016 graduate of Kell High School in Cobb County, was a student at an art school in California and was home on break.
Her mother described her as 'an artist in every way, painting, music, and was the brightest spirit.'
The horrifying ordeal began when two armed men forced their way into the apartment where Liger and two other individuals were present. The assailants, later identified as Anthony Laquan Goss, 28, and Roy Hill, 18, subjected the three victims to hours of torture. The male victim was pistol-whipped and forced into a bathtub, while the women were also assaulted. Liger was sexually assaulted before being fatally shot in the head. The other two victims sustained injuries but survived the attack.
Investigators quickly launched a manhunt for the perpetrators. Just two days after the incident, on August 23, Anthony Laquan Goss was arrested in East Point. A second suspect, Roy Hill, was taken into custody the following week. Both men were charged with a litany of offenses, including murder, kidnapping, and rape. They were subsequently held in the Fulton County Jail without bond.
During a preliminary hearing, chilling details of the crime emerged. An Atlanta police detective testified that the attack appeared to be random and that the suspects did not know the victims. The detective recounted how the victims were terrorized, with the suspects allegedly playing a twisted game of 'eeny meeny miny mo' to decide who would be killed. According to the testimony, Goss then shot Liger in the head. The other female victim managed to escape and call for help after a fight broke out between the two suspects, who then fled the scene. Evidence left at the scene, including a cell phone and DNA, reportedly linked Goss and Hill to the crime.
