In what was described by his family as a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, 34-year-old Vitali Mialik, a male resident of Suwanee, Georgia, was shot and killed on the night of Friday, February 3, 2017. Mialik, who had lived in the area for nine years, was working to save enough money to bring his wife and two children to the United States from Belarus. On that fatal evening, he had stopped at a Valero gas station located in the 1700 block of Beaver Ruin Road in unincorporated Norcross to make a purchase from the store.
While Mialik was at the gas station, two men arrived in a white or silver SUV, possibly a Toyota 4-Runner or a similar vehicle. After the two men exited the convenience store, a verbal argument broke out between them and Mialik in the parking lot. The situation quickly escalated, and one of the men retrieved an assault rifle from their vehicle and shot Mialik. He was struck by a single gunshot to the neck and was pronounced dead at the scene when police arrived around 11:15 p.m.
Following the incident, Gwinnett County police launched an investigation and, with the help of surveillance footage and tips from the public, identified one of the suspects as 19-year-old Nickolas Young. An arrest warrant was issued, charging Young with murder and aggravated assault. For over a month, Young remained at large. The second man involved in the altercation was not clearly captured on surveillance video and has not been publicly identified.
On March 16, 2017, after a month-long search, Nickolas Kaymon Young was taken into custody by sheriff's deputies at a residence off Collins Hill Road. He was subsequently booked into the Gwinnett County Jail. At the time of his arrest, police expressed hope that the capture of the murder suspect would bring some measure of peace to Vitali Mialik's grieving family.
