Edward Fernandez said his phone buzzed throughout the day Wednesday with friends and relatives all asking the same question: “Is it true?”
Just hours earlier, Fernandez’s friend and co-worker, 29-year-old Deon Green, a father of eight, had been gunned down in a shooting in Atlanta’s Carey Park neighborhood, authorities said.
“My family is destroyed,” Fernandez told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone Thursday morning. “He was like family to us.”
Green worked several jobs, rising from a security person to regional manager at Fernandez’s Atlanta-based business, 1st Place Hotels & Properties, the CEO said. At the time of his death, Green was also an employee with Thompson Transport LLC, a contractor that transports the dead to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office, officials confirmed.
“He had an amazing work ethic where he always put his best foot forward,” Fernandez, 35, said. “He just gave so much effort and passion and intensity to everything he did.”
Green was on call with Thompson Transport around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday when he was shot in the 2500 block of Etheridge Drive. Officers arrived at the scene in northwest Atlanta and found Green unresponsive and suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to the hospital, where he died, police said.
Green had been visiting a friend and was struck while heading to a nearby store, Channel 2 Action News reported.
“(He) was on call (ready to respond) with his employer but was not on an active scene call with the medical examiner’s office when he was shot,” a senior investigator for the medical examiner’s office said via email. “He was not a Fulton County employee, but was well known by members of the investigation and forensic units.”
After hearing the news, Fernandez’s entire staff spent Wednesday in mourning, with many needing to leave work early. Overcome with emotion, Fernandez had to cut a morning conference call short, a rarity for him.
“I was two minutes into it and I just broke down,” Fernandez said. Green helped build 1st Place, Fernandez said, but had been on a leave of absence since September.
Edward Fernandez
Edward Fernandez
Fernandez described Green as genuine, with a childlike nature. That was fitting, considering he had eight children, including twins who are under the age of 1.
Outside of work, Green would routinely take his kids to Fernandez’s Roswell home to swim, hang out and have fun. Their laughter could be heard throughout the neighborhood, especially when Fernandez would bring out inflatable bounce houses on special occasions. Green never missed a party, he said.
On Tuesday, about 20 miles southwest of Fernandez’s residence, homicide investigators were called to the shooting scene, located between Hightower Road and James Jackson Parkway. A motive is unclear, and authorities have not said what led to the gunfire or if any arrests have been made.
Amid the uncertainty over what happened to Green, his friends and loved ones remain devastated.
“I got to bury my baby boy,” Green’s father, Task Moreland, told Channel 2.
Green had aspirations of one day replacing Fernandez as CEO of 1st Place. Fernandez said Green saw the business as his own.
“I’m praying for his family. I’m praying for the 1st Place family,” Fernandez said. “Because everybody has been truly impacted.”
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