Police continued to search Friday for the gunman who fatally shot a man after he dropped off his daughter at a Dunwoody preschool.
The preschool was open as usual Friday morning with one addition: An off-duty DeKalb County police officer was stationed on a motorcycle outside the school to provide extra security.
Dunwoody police said Russell Sneiderman, 36, had dropped off his child and was getting back into this car Thursday morning when a man approached and shot him several times.
The shooting does not appear to have a been a random homicide, said Sgt. Mike Carlson. Thursday evening, Carlson said, Dunwoody police were fanning out to interview people who knew Sneiderman. But Carlson said investigators had reached no conclusions about the motive behind the killing.
"There's nothing showing right now that it's random," Carlson said. But he quickly added: "We don't know if he was a target or not."
"All we know is that he pulled up about 9:10 in the morning, and the witnesses, they saw another white male walk up to him and start firing," Carlson told the AJC.
The shooter was spotted leaving the preschool in a silver Dodge Minivan, Carlson said. Shortly before noon, a silver Infiniti was towed from the school parking lot.
The suspect, wearing a hoodie, is between 5-foot-10 and 5-foot-11 and was last seen traveling west on Mount Vernon Road, Carlson said.
"It's very disturbing that this was so close to a school," he said. "We definitely want to find this individual."
Investigators were reviewing surveillance video Thursday and were obtaining security videos from other establishments in the area.
Natalia Kelly left her 2-year-old son at his Dunwoody preschool Thursday morning and then drove to a nearby bank.
"I just dropped him off and within two minutes heard four gunshots," Kelly told the AJC. "But then I thought to myself, ‘That certainly couldn't be gunshots. We're at school, we're in Dunwoody, what's going on here?'"
Kelly said she drove back over to Dunwoody Prep Preschool, pulled into the parking lot and saw man lying on the pavement.
Sneiderman, a certified public accountant with an MBA from Harvard University, at one point worked for the Atlanta division of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Private Bank and served previously as a chief operating officer for Innovia Group.
He was an organizer of at least three small companies, including a consulting firm that bore his name, according to records from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
He was also actively involved with medical charities through the years.
From 2004 to 2007, Sneiderman served on the board of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation, a Maryland nonprofit devoted to funding research and promoting awareness of a genetic disorder often known as “brittle bone disease.”
Ken Finkel, a former board president of the OI Foundation, remembered Sneiderman as a kind, quiet and professional director of the foundation.
Finkel said Sneiderman was one of the leading voices on the board during its strategic planning sessions, helping to keep directors focused on the best allocation of the foundation’s resources and on fundraising opportunities.
“He was very thoughtful,” said Finkel. “Some people walk into a room and carry themselves in such a manner that you know they are well-educated, sharp, attuned and soak up information quickly.
“That was Rusty,” Finkel said.
Natalia Kelly said she will take her son back to the preschool today.
"The school is extremely safe, they have security, they have cameras," she told the AJC. "I would have left him here [Thursday] if I hadn’t just been so close to the situation. ... The teachers would do anything to protect these children, it’s the fact that I’m here, and I want to be with him."
Police said no one in the school witnessed the shooting.
Staff writers J. Scott Trubey and Christian Boone contributed to this report.
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