Carlos Lazier Wicks was 17 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Sunday, June 21, 2015, which was Father's Day. 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.
Few details about his death have been made public. No news story about the killing could be found for this account.
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.
A brief published obituary confirms his full name and age. It says Carlos Lazier Wicks, age 17, died on June 21, 2015, with arrangements handled by a Georgia funeral home. No longer obituary describing his school, his family or what he liked to do could be found, and no memorial fundraiser or family statement about his death has surfaced.
His case still appears on SpotCrime's list of metro Atlanta cold cases, which shows Carlos Wicks, age 17, as a murder victim in an Atlanta Police Department case. Searches also turn up other people named Carlos Wicks, including an older man in Illinois and a man in St. Louis; they are not connected to his death.
His age is what stands out most. At 17 he was still a minor, likely a high school student, with parents, siblings, classmates and friends who knew where he went and whom he spent time with. That he was killed on Father's Day, a day when many families gather, may help people who knew him remember exactly where they were and what they heard.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in east Atlanta, a short distance east of downtown. The neighborhoods there are dense and residential, and on a summer Sunday people would have been out on porches and in the streets. Someone may have seen or heard something that night.
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. Teenagers made up a painful share of those victims.
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 Carlos Wicks could be found in news archives or public records. More than 11 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Classmates, friends or neighbors who saw Carlos Wicks on Father's Day 2015, or who heard talk afterward about who was with 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.
