A man who had been reported missing was found dead hours later inside a car in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen in northeast Atlanta earlier this month. Police are now trying to identify two “persons of interest” in the investigation.
John David Woodall, 52, was found dead in the passenger seat of a gray 2020 Toyota RAV-4 on Aug. 4, Atlanta police spokesman Officer Anthony Grant said.
Police released surveillance video Wednesday from a Wendy’s parking lot on Boulevard that appears to show two men interacting with the RAV-4. The Wendy’s is less than a mile from the Dairy Queen on North Avenue, Grant confirmed.
The department is asking for the public’s help in identifying the two men.
The footage appears to show one of the men driving the RAV-4 and backing into a parking spot around 5:30 a.m. Both men then seem to walk away from the car and return to the Wendy’s parking lot about an hour later. They then drove to the Dairy Queen, Grant said.
Eight hours later, police were called about a person inside a vehicle in the parking lot, according to an incident report released Wednesday. Officers said they spotted the RAV-4 with a man slumped in the front passenger seat. The SUV was locked.
Grant confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the two men shown in the surveillance footage took the RAV-4′s key with them after walking away from the car.
After a towing company assisted in unlocking the vehicle, police did not identify any “visible trauma” to Woodall’s body. The medical examiner’s report has not been released to police, so the incident is being ruled as a death investigation, Grant said.
Around noon that day, Woodall was reported missing by his wife after he didn’t return home after telling his daughter he was going to fix her computer the prior evening, a missing persons report also released Wednesday shows. Woodall messaged his daughter Aug. 3 to say he had fixed the computer at a shop in Midtown. That was the last the family heard from him, the report said.
Shortly after, there were several charges on the family credit card without an address to verify where the transactions were coming from, the report reveals.
The family told police that Woodall was last seen in a 2016 dark gray Toyota Highlander with the Georgia tag CKU2175. Grant did not say if the Highlander was recovered.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact Crime Stoppers by calling 404-577-8477, going online to www.crimestoppersatlanta.org, or texting CSA and the tip to CRIMES (274637). Tipsters can receive up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification of the two men shown in the video.
— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.
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