A 25-year-old father found shot in his truck at a business plaza near a Cobb County high school Friday is brain dead, his family said.
Daniel Perez was in the passenger seat of a pickup at the Shops at Blue Springs near North Cobb High when two men approached the truck, Acworth police said. One of the men shot him in the head.
The father of three was with his brother at the time.
Perez was taken to WellStar Kennestone Hospital, Acworth police Cpl. Youlanda Leverette said. Perez’s family said he is on life support.
“It’s just sad because he was just taking his brother to a job interview literally that morning,” his sister-in-law, Lucia Gonzalez, told Channel 2 Action News. Perez recently purchased the truck to start his landscaping business.
Police dogs searched the area for the suspects Friday but did not find them.
Acworth police have not said what led to the shooting or why Perez and his brother were at the plaza. A description of the suspects also has not been released.
Perez is a graduate of North Cobb, but police said the shooting wasn’t connected to the school.
His family told Channel 2 that the week before his shooting they were at Perez’s 1-year-old son’s baptism. He has two other children, the oldest a 4-year-old girl.
“She’s kind of catching on at this point,” another sister-in-law, Lorena Gonzalez, said. “She knows that her dad is not OK.”
Why someone would shoot Perez is a mystery to his family.
“They’re cowards for doing this, especially the way they did it,” Lorena Gonzalez told Channel 2. “Sneaking up on them and then just running away.”
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