Anthony Crawford, a 16-year-old Black male from Savannah, was killed just after midnight on May 19, 2015, in the Fred Wessels Homes public housing complex. Police said officers were sent to the area after a ShotSpotter alert at 12:13 a.m. and found him on a sidewalk near Burney Drive and East Oglethorpe Avenue with a gunshot wound. He was rushed to Memorial University Medical Center, but he did not survive. In the first hours after the shooting, detectives worked through the night, canvassing the neighborhood and trying to piece together what had happened in the darkness before dawn.
What gives the case an especially tragic weight is that Crawford had already survived another shooting only weeks earlier. On April 1, 2015, police said he was riding his bicycle on East 39th Street when he stopped to speak with people he knew. Investigators alleged that 17-year-old Jamari Cartledge pulled a handgun, demanded Crawford’s bicycle, and shot him when he resisted. Cartledge was later sought by police and then arrested on charges of aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit armed robbery, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. That earlier case showed Crawford had already been caught in the violence surrounding him, but the publicly available reporting located here does not show that Cartledge was charged in Crawford’s fatal May 19 homicide.
In the homicide itself, the public record available from the original police release shows investigators asking for help, not announcing an arrest. The department said violent-crimes detectives were still working to establish the crime scene and urged anyone with information to come forward. In the materials available online from the sources reviewed, no suspect is publicly identified and no arrest, indictment, trial, or conviction is documented for the fatal shooting on May 19, 2015. What remains in the record is the image of a teenager who made it to the hospital once before, only to be fatally shot weeks later in Savannah, leaving behind a case that, at least from the online reporting and official notice available here, appears to have remained unresolved.
