Gerald English was 44 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Friday, September 28, 2007. The Atlanta Police Department investigated his death, and the Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in Atlanta from 2007 through 2017, lists it as a homicide that remained open with no arrest.
Almost nothing about how he died has been made public. No news story describing the killing could be found for this account.
The record does not say how he was killed, what time of day it happened, whether he was attacked at home or outdoors, whether he knew his attacker, whether anyone else was hurt, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. No suspect, vehicle or motive has been described publicly.
A family-placed death notice published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2007 announced a celebration of life for Mr. Gerald Lloyd English of Harlan Road S.W. in Atlanta. The available portion of the notice does not give his age or date of death, so it cannot be confirmed that it refers to the same man, but the address lies in the same part of southwest Atlanta where the database places his death.
Gerald English's name also appears in a 2018 Washington Post investigation that listed thousands of homicide victims in major American cities whose killings had not led to an arrest.
Gerald English is also a name shared by other people, including a well-known English tenor who died in 2019, an engineer and a runner in metro Atlanta, and men named in obituaries in Arkansas and elsewhere. None of them is the 44-year-old who died in September 2007, and their records crowd out any trace of his own story.
His age stands out. Most homicide victims in Atlanta in those years were in their teens and 20s. At 44, he would likely have had a settled circle of family, friends and co-workers. The location recorded in the database places his death in southwest Atlanta, an area of single-family streets and long-time residents west of downtown, where neighbors may remember the police activity that followed on a Friday in late September.
Atlanta, the capital of Georgia and the center of a metro area of more than 5 million people, recorded roughly 75 to 130 homicides a year between 2007 and 2017. Most victims were young men killed with guns, and many of those killings never led to an arrest. Cases with few public details often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Gerald English could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Gerald English, including neighbors near Harlan Road in southwest Atlanta, or who saw him in the days before he died, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit at 404-546-4235, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta at 404-577-TIPS (404-577-8477), which may pay a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest.
