Alston Emmanuel was 92 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Friday, September 10, 2010. 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.
His age makes his case one of the most unusual in the database. At 92, he was decades older than nearly all of the city's homicide victims in those years, most of whom were young men.
A man of his age is often frail, living alone or relying on relatives, neighbors or caregivers, and those people would have been among the first to notice something was wrong. No news story about his death, obituary or memorial page could be found.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say how he was killed, exactly where it happened, whether he knew the person responsible, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect. For a man of his age, the record also does not say whether his death followed a robbery, a break-in or a long-ago injury.
Public records may contain a trace of his earlier life. A 1986 federal court decision describes an Alston Emmanuel who was then 67 years old, unemployed and living in Atlanta, and who had last worked in 1983. That age matches the age recorded for him in 2010, and the name is rare, but the decision does not prove they are the same man, and it says nothing about his death.
His case still appears on CrimeTea, an online cold-case listing, which carries his death as an active, unsolved murder in Atlanta. He was killed on a Friday in early September. Because his first and last names could both be given names, some records may list him as Emmanuel Alston instead.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in southwest Atlanta, far from downtown. People who lived or worked in that area in September 2010 may remember Alston Emmanuel, 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 those years never led to an arrest, and the Washington Post's 2018 investigation counted Atlanta among the cities with large numbers of unsolved homicides.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Alston Emmanuel could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who cared for Alston Emmanuel, lived near him or visited him in his last years, or who heard talk afterward of what happened to him, 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.
