may 18th, sometime after 10:00 p.m. 14-year-old eric middlebrooks leaves his family s apartment in southeast atlanta. eric middlebrooks went out late one night and told his family he was going out to fix his bike. eric was found the next morning a few blocks away lying beside his bike in a pool of blood. i mean they re messing with our kids, man, and there ain t nothing we can do about it. i feel it s very sad. something very wrong. it s scary. the medical examiner determines that eric died of a brain injury due to a blunt instrument. on the day before her 7th birthday, latonya wilson s parents report her missing. i ll never forget watching the news, and there was a girl whose face popped up. and i ll never forget telling my mom, she was in one of my elementary school classes. and that s when it really became
feelings were running very high in the community about the murder cases themselves, so this tended to galvanize the community because they felt that possibly this was part of a pattern of murders. i know the frustration you feel. i feel the same frustration. just a minute. atlanta s mayor steps in to assure the angry residents that it is not a bomb that exploded, but rather a faulty boiler. the only evidence we have at this time indicates that this was an accident. all right. move out about 50 yards that way. although suspicions linger in the community that the crimes are racially motivated, in mid-october, black and white volunteers worked together to help locate some of the children who are missing. on their first day of searching, they find the body of latonya wilson, missing for six months. but when investigators find no tangible evidence at the crime scene, the community s frustration plays out on local television.
eric middlebrooks went out late one night and told his family he was going out to fix his bike. eric was found the next morning a few blocks away lying beside his bike in a pool of blood. i mean they re messing with our kids, man, and there ain t nothing we can do about it. i feel it s very sad. something very wrong. it s scary. the medical examiner determines that eric died of a brain injury due to a blunt instrument. on the day before her 7th birthday, latonya wilson s parents report her missing. i ll never forget watching the news, and there was a girl whose face popped up. and i ll never forget telling my mom, she was in one of my elementary school classes. and that s when it really became personal for me. here s somebody i actually knew. and she is missing.