Innocent Man Killed During Vigilante Search for Abducted 1-Year-Old, Police Say

A terrifying kidnapping ordeal in Georgia ended with the best possible outcome last week when a family was reunited with their missing 1-year-old boy, but police now say an innocent 60-year-old man was shot dead when some of the child’s family members went full vigilante in the chaotic hours after his disappearance.

Two members of a search party for 1-year-old Blaise Barnett are now facing murder charges. They’re accused of involvement in the shooting death of 60-year-old Aziz Hassan. Hassan was gunned down late last Wednesday at the Brannon Hill Condominiums in Clarkston, where the family’s Ford was found empty on Wednesday afternoon, hours after it was stolen by unknown culprits with the toddler sleeping inside.

The boy—who was taken along with the family’s SUV in the early hours of Wednesday morning—turned up the next day about a mile from his home, placed in an SUV in a woman’s driveway. Police have yet to name a suspect in the baby’s disappearance, and it remains unclear where he was for the 36 hours he was missing.

But his family members apparently wasted no time looking for him.

Residents of the condo complex where the family’s SUV turned up said the boy’s relatives descended on the area that night, going door to door throughout the night and asking residents if they had him.

“That night I didn’t sleep because they are knocking the door and they are loud, shouting,” Fowsia Abdullhai was quoted as telling Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News. “Knocking the people’s door and asking, ‘Can we look around and check if you have the son, the missing son?’”

It was during this frantic search that Hassan was shot dead, authorities say.

The circumstances of the shooting are not entirely clear, but police said Hassan was killed during some kind of disagreement. Delarius Miller and Santana Miller, cousins of the infant’s father, have been taken into custody and are both facing murder charges.

“There’s no evidence to suggest that Mr. Hassan had any involvement in the kidnapping of the 1-year-old,” a spokesperson for the DeKalb County police told Channel 2.

Residents of the condo complex described hearing banging on doors all night, with the noise suddenly stopping only after the gunfire erupted.

“I don’t know why they did that,” one resident of the complex identified as Abdullah told WSB-TV. He said Hassan had come to America with his own family to escape violence back home.

Hassan’s family was hit hard by news of his death.

“It was really awful. We moved from where they lived almost 15 years ago. He was a great person, never hurt anybody. If anybody needed something, he’d go out of his way to get it. Very kind hearted. The way he was taken from the world was just very wrong. He was a very great person that the world is gonna miss,” Hassan’s nephew, Samir, told The Daily Beast.

The news of his death and its connection to the abduction came just days after the town of Clarkston was urged to “breathe a collective sigh of relief” at the news that the boy was found.

Police at that time had celebrated the positive outcome: “While the investigation is still ongoing, we all pause to celebrate this joyous moment knowing that Blaise is safe and now reunited with his family.”