Kenneth Waters was 19 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Monday, October 27, 2008. The Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit investigated, 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. At 19, he was barely an adult.
His family placed a short death notice in the Atlanta paper a few days later. It identified him as Kenneth A.
Waters, age 19, of Atlanta, and said he passed October 27, 2008. Beyond that notice, almost nothing about his life has been made public. No news story about the killing, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say how he was killed, whether he was attacked indoors or on the street, whether he knew the person who killed him, what time of day it happened, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
A 19-year-old would only recently have left high school. He likely had parents, siblings, classmates and friends who knew his routines, whom he spent time with and whether anything had been troubling him in the weeks before he died. Young people his age often talk among themselves about what happened, even when no one speaks to police.
His name is shared with a man whose story is well known: Kenneth Waters of Massachusetts, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1983, freed with the help of his sister in 2001, and whose case became the film "Conviction." Searches for the name are dominated by that story, which has nothing to do with the young man who died in Atlanta in 2008.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in west Atlanta, on the city's Westside several miles from downtown. People who lived in that part of the city in late October 2008 may remember Kenneth, and may remember the police activity that followed his death.
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 in those years were young men, and most were killed with guns. Many killings from that period never led to an arrest, and the Post's 2018 investigation counted Atlanta among the cities with large numbers of unsolved homicides. Most victims were young men like Kenneth, and cases with few public details often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Kenneth Waters could be found in news archives or public records. More than 17 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Former classmates, friends and neighbors who knew Kenneth Waters, and anyone 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.
