Donald Lott was 52 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Thursday, September 27, 2012. The Atlanta Police Department 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.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about Donald Lott has been made public.
No news story about his killing, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. A death notice for a Donald Lott was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2012, but the available listing does not give enough detail to confirm that it refers to the same man.
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 his attacker, 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.
Donald Lott is also a name shared by many other people, including men in Colorado, Oklahoma and elsewhere whose records and obituaries dominate search results. That makes it harder to find any trace of the man who died in Atlanta in 2012, and may help explain why his story has been so hard to follow.
His age stands out. Most homicide victims in Atlanta in those years were young men, and at 52 he was far older than most. A man of his age would likely have had close family and neighbors who knew his routines.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in southwest Atlanta, south of downtown. The exact same map coordinates are recorded for another Atlanta homicide less than three weeks later, the death of Craig Bagley, 57, on October 15, 2012. The database does not explain why, and it may reflect how locations were entered rather than a link between the two deaths, but people who lived in that part of the city that autumn may remember both.
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 of those killings never led to an arrest, and the Washington Post's 2018 investigation of unsolved homicides counted Atlanta among the cities with large numbers of them. Cases with few public details, like his, often faded from view quickly.
The Post database itself was built for a 2018 investigation of unsolved killings in major American cities. Being listed there means that, years after the killing, the case was still counted among those for which no one had been arrested.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Donald Lott could be found in news archives or public records. More than 14 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Donald Lott, saw him in late September 2012, or 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.
