The coronavirus pandemic and a dream brought Andre Majors to the city seven months ago.
The former banker had always kindled his entrepreneurial spirit and was the funniest guy in any room, but the recent loss of his job left him out of excuses. He packed up his Denver apartment, kissed his wife and their fluffy dog goodbye and arrived in Atlanta in June, promising to make a better life for his family as an actor and standup comic in the Hollywood of the South.
Majors was making progress with bit roles here and there, his wife Kelcey Majors said. He had booked appearances at comedy shows at night clubs around the city. Then, on Dec. 1, he was found dead in the parking lot of a music recording studio on Campbellton Road. He was 29 years old.
The body of Herman Gibbs, 32, was found lying next to him. Both men had been shot multiple times, according to Atlanta police.
Kelcey Majors is now left to pull at the threads of her husband’s life in an unfamiliar city, hoping something leads her to answers in his death.
“Andre, the best way to describe him is that he’s a dreamer,” she said. “He’s always been in different entertainment endeavors. Acting and comedy was just another one of those ways to dream. I don’t think he ever really wanted to be famous, but he wanted to be important.”
Credit: Family photo
Credit: Family photo
Kelcey Majors said her husband really believed that moving to Georgia was going to turn their lives around. Both were faced with unemployment, and both had experienced sickness and loss in their families this year, she said. She and the couple’s dog, Nala, moved to North Carolina to be closer to him.
The family intended to reunite for the holidays.
“He very much is a family man who had a tough year like a lot of us,” she said.
When Majors and his wife spoke on the phone, he never mentioned Gibbs, she said. She can only guess why he may have gone to the southwest Atlanta recording studio late that night.
No one stuck around to speak with investigators after the double shooting, one of four homicides reported across the city on Dec. 1, according to an incident report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The parking lot was empty when police arrived just before midnight, except for the bodies of the two men and two abandoned vehicles.
The vehicles were taken into evidence, and police did not find drugs or anything else criminal inside them, according to the report.
“I just know Andre is the type of guy that if someone told him there was an opportunity somewhere, to make a recording, to be on stage, to meet someone who could introduce him to someone else, he wouldn’t turn that down,” his wife said.
It is unknown if Majors and Gibbs were at the studio together. Gibbs, who leaves behind two young sons, performed as rapper Baby Boy and was there to record his music, according to his family.
No arrests have been made in their deaths.
Kelcey Majors has been in Virginia to support her husband’s family since his death. In going through his things she found pieces of jokes he was workshopping. Most of them, she said, involved their dog or his family, including his three siblings and four uncles who meant the world to him.
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Some of the jokes were shared at Majors’ funeral last week in Roanoke. No doubt he would have delivered them differently, if he were given the chance.
“I love my family, man,” Majors began one joke. “I would do anything for them, except answer the phone or Facetime (wait for laugh). I’m that relative that’s present at all the family events but will never probably answer your call. You can have just seen me, and call me an hour or two later and I promise you a Hardee’s sandwich, I will not answer.”
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