In the early hours of November 14, 2015, a wave of violence in Savannah, Georgia, claimed the life of 18-year-old Robert Brown and another man, leaving a community stunned and searching for answers. The night's tragic events unfolded in two separate, yet connected, shootings that would take investigators years to solve.
Shortly before 1:00 a.m., the grim reality of the evening began to surface when a private vehicle arrived at Candler Hospital carrying a gravely wounded Robert Brown. Despite medical efforts, the young man succumbed to his injuries. Police determined that the shooting that ended Brown's life had occurred in the vicinity of 57th and Montgomery streets. The initial hours of the investigation offered few leads, casting a shadow of uncertainty over the city.
The violence of that night was not yet over. About an hour and a half later, at 2:30 a.m., police were called to the scene of another shooting, this time at the intersection of West 45th and Montgomery streets. There, they discovered 31-year-old Emmanuel Simmons suffering from gunshot wounds. Simmons was rushed to a nearby hospital, but he, too, would not survive his injuries. The two homicides, occurring in such close proximity in terms of time and location, led investigators to believe they were linked.
For three years, the families of Robert Brown and Emmanuel Simmons waited for a breakthrough in the case. That break finally came on December 31, 2018, when Savannah Police Department's violent crimes detectives announced they had served murder warrants on a suspect. The individual charged with two counts of murder was 36-year-old Nathaniel Thomas Pugh III. At the time the warrants were served, Pugh was already incarcerated in the Jesup Federal Correctional Institute on unrelated federal charges.
Pugh's existing legal troubles stemmed from an incident that occurred just ten days before the double homicide. On November 4, 2015, Pugh was involved in a shootout in Savannah's Oak Forest neighborhood. After being shot, he drove his car, which was riddled with bullets, to the hospital. A subsequent search of his vehicle by law enforcement uncovered a Glock firearm with his DNA on it, as well as a significant quantity of the drug 'Molly,' cocaine, and other drug paraphernalia. In December 2017, a federal jury convicted Pugh of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession with intent to distribute ethylone and possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking. He was sentenced to 200 months in federal prison for these crimes in March 2018. Pugh has a lengthy criminal history that includes convictions for drug possession with intent to distribute, terroristic threats, and simple battery.
While an arrest was made in connection with the murders of Robert Brown and Emmanuel Simmons, the ultimate disposition of those state-level charges against Nathaniel Thomas Pugh III is not publicly documented in available online sources.
