Police said the kidnapping of a 1-year-old boy last week in Clarkston is tied to a deadly shooting at an apartment complex while the child was still missing.
Blaise Barnett vanished for over 36 hours after his parents said he was abducted when their SUV was stolen outside their home early Wednesday morning.
Police confirmed to that they believe a deadly shooting in the area on Wednesday night is connected to Blaise’s kidnapping.
Police say that a man and a woman went to the Brannon Hill Condominiums on Wednesday night and shot 60-year-old Aziz Hassan. Hassan died at the scene. Police said there is no evidence to suggest Hassan had any involvement in the kidnapping.
38-year-old Delarius Miller was arrested the same day and charged with murder. 34-year-old Santana Miller was also arrested on Sunday and charged with malice murder.
It’s unclear if the two suspects have any relationship to Blaise or his family, but family members were looking for the child in the same area Wednesday night.
Choi talked to neighbors, who described a frantic night as friends and family of the missing baby tried to find him.
“That night I didn’t sleep, because they were knocking on the door, loud shouting,” Fowsia Abdullah said. “They were all over. People knocking on the people’s doors and asking, ‘Can we look around and check if you have the son?’”
Neighbors said the knocking stopped when the shooting started.
Abdullah remembered Hassan as a nice guy.
“I don’t know why they did that,” Abdullah said of the shooter.
Abdullah said Hassan’s death is especially sad because he brought his family to America to escape bullets in his home country.
In the police report, the Millers said Hassan fired at them first.
Blaise’s mother said the pair are family friends.
Police also released 911 calls from moments after Blaise was abducted. His father, Xavier Barnett, frantically told dispatchers that someone had taken the car with his son inside.
“I took my nephew in the house and put all my bags in the house,” he says. “I came back out, everything gone.”
He told the dispatcher he saw a man walking down the street, but that he was all the way across the street. Barnett said he didn’t know anyone in the area who could have targeted him.
The SUV that Blaise was abducted in was found without the child inside near the shooting scene at Brannon Hills on Wednesday afternoon.
Blaise was found safe in a car less than a mile from his home Thursday morning. He has since been reunited with his family. It’s still unclear where the baby was in the 36 hours he was missing.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents carried Blaise from the home where he was found. The child was treated at the hospital and released back to his family.
Police have not identified the suspect they believe took the baby.
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