On a cold December morning in 2014, a young man named D'Monte Brown, 25, was following his daily routine, a path that would tragically be his last. He was taking a familiar shortcut through a wooded area near a Home Depot on New Snapfinger Woods Drive at Wesley Chapel Road in DeKalb County, on his way to meet his boss for a ride to work. It was around 8 a.m. on Friday, December 12th, when his life was cut short by gunfire.
Police who arrived on the scene discovered Brown with multiple gunshot wounds, including a fatal one to the head. Investigators canvassed the area, a stretch of woods about 150 yards from the bustling home improvement store. While they did not immediately release many details, the theory that this was a random act of violence quickly began to fade. Both family members and law enforcement soon believed that D'Monte and his attacker were not strangers. Friends and family contended that he was killed by someone he had known since childhood.
The investigation into D'Monte's death moved swiftly. Just two days after the shooting, on December 14, 2014, police arrested Michael Bargainer in connection with the murder of D'Monte Antwan Brown. The arrest was part of a larger, multi-agency effort called 'Operation Safe DeKalb 2015,' which aimed to clear a backlog of outstanding warrants in the county. Bargainer was one of six murder suspects taken into custody during this two-week operation that resulted in a total of 200 arrests.
D'Monte Brown, who worked for a company called Alpha Evictions, left behind a 5-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. His stepfather, Joseph Smith, remembered him as a 'nice young man' and was baffled as to why anyone would want to harm him. The sense of a personal motive was strong, with a DeKalb County police captain confirming that investigators believed Brown knew his attacker and that they had a person of interest they were seeking to question even before Bargainer's arrest was announced.
