In the late summer of 2011, the community of Savannah, Georgia, was unsettled by the discovery of a young man's body. Akeem Laurel, a 27-year-old man, was found deceased in a lane off West 38th Street. The grim discovery was made by a passerby in the early morning hours.
At the time, the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department launched a homicide investigation into Laurel's death.
An autopsy was performed to determine the cause of his death, though the results were not publicly released. Investigators at the time noted that they had not found any immediate connection between Laurel's death and another fatal shooting that had occurred just blocks away around the same time. In that separate incident, an arrest was made.
There is a discrepancy concerning the exact date of Akeem Laurel's passing. A police department news release dated September 30, 2011, stated that his body was found on the previous Friday, which would have been September 23, 2011. However, a memorial obituary published a year later listed his date of death as September 16, 2011.
In the years that followed, there have been no public announcements from law enforcement regarding any arrests or the identification of any suspects in connection with Akeem Laurel's death. The case appears to have gone cold, joining the ranks of other unsolved homicides in the Savannah area. The investigation into who was responsible for the death of Akeem Laurel remains open, leaving his family and community without closure.
