A restaurant in downtown Decatur is mourning the loss of a beloved cook who died over the weekend.
Oscar Mateo worked at Noodle Decatur, which is located on the corner of E. Ponce de Leon Avenue and Church Street. He was killed in a shooting Sunday morning, the restaurant wrote on a GoFundMe page. The GoFundMe did not elaborate about the circumstances of the shooting or where it occurred.
The fundraiser surpassed its initial $1,000 goal within 24 hours, and raised almost $1,200 as of Tuesday afternoon.
“He always had a smile on his face,” Parker Hilley, the general manager at Noodle, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He was genuinely a nice guy who got along with everybody, and everybody loved him.”
Hilley created the GoFundMe page to raise money for Mateo's wife and five children. They live in Guatemala and Mateo supported them, she said.
He worked at Noodle for nine years, longer than the current owners have had the restaurant.
“We’re all trying to process it in different ways,” she said.
He was a fantastic cook, and was known for making “the best fried rice you’ve ever had,” the GoFundMe stated.
Hilley said she is still trying to gather details on how he died.
The restaurant, known for serving pan-Asian cuisine, reopened in late April after a fire at nearby coffee shop Java Monkey damaged part of it. The two businesses share a wall.
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