Ronald Clark, 57, a white man from Atlanta, was killed on April 26, 2013, after what should have been an ordinary workday turned into a carefully staged ambush on Marietta Boulevard. Police said he had just cashed a check and gotten back into his van when the attack unfolded. Somewhere along that short drive, a man who had apparently hidden in the back of the van rose up and struck him with a hammer. Clark fought back, but investigators say the attacker then shot him in the stomach.
He was found shot and beaten in the roadway next to his van at 2053 Marietta Boulevard and was taken to Grady Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
What makes the case especially haunting is the sense that this was not random chaos, but something set in motion before Clark ever turned the key. Investigators said the gunman did not act alone. According to police, after the attack the shooter climbed out of Clark’s van and fled in another vehicle with two men already inside, making three suspects in all. Surveillance and later-released video pointed detectives toward a black Jeep Cherokee, believed to be a 2008 to 2010 Limited Edition model with side panels, but the license plate could not be clearly read. Detectives also said one suspect was seen going into a nearby business, Sunny’s, apparently checking the scene while another slipped into the back of Clark’s van to wait.
The killing left behind not only a crime scene, but a family trying to make sense of a death that seemed as cruel as it was deliberate. His widow spoke publicly and pleaded for help, while his daughter described the grief as something that never loosened its grip. Detectives came to believe Clark may have been set up by someone familiar with his routine, because the people most likely to know he was cashing a large check that day were those close to his business. One investigator said he believed one of the suspects may have worked for Clark, who owned a furniture-making business, and the theory added a deeper bitterness to the case: the possibility that the men who circled him that day knew exactly where he would be and what he would be carrying.
As for arrests, no public reports from the Atlanta Police Department’s cold homicide listing indicate that anyone has been arrested or charged in Clark’s killing, and the case remains unsolved in the department’s cold case files. The public record available online still points to three wanted suspects, an apparent robbery motive, and a murder that investigators believed was planned rather than spontaneous. More than a decade later, the outline of what happened is painfully clear, but the names of the men who carried it out have still not been publicly tied to an arrest or conviction.
