CLARKSTON, Ga. — Police said the kidnapping of a 1-year-old boy last week in Clarkston is tied to a deadly shooting at an apartment complex while the child was still missing.
Blaise Barnett vanished for over 36 hours after his parents said he was abducted when their SUV was stolen outside their home early Wednesday morning.
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Police confirmed to Channel 2′s Sophia Choi that they believe a deadly shooting in the area on Wednesday night is connected to Blaise’s kidnapping.
Police say that a man and a woman went to the Brannon Hill Condominiums on Wednesday night and shot Aziz Hassan, 60. Hassan died at the scene. Police said there is no evidence to suggest Hassan had any involvement in the kidnapping.
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Delarius Miller, 38, was arrested the same day and charged with murder. Santana Miller, 34, was also arrested on Sunday and charged with malice murder.
Blaise’s mother initially told Choi that the pair were family friends, but later confirmed to Channel 2′s Ashli Lincoln that they are cousins of Blaise’s father.
Family members were looking for the child Wednesday night in the same area where the shooting took place.
Choi talked to neighbors, who described a frantic night as friends and family of the missing baby tried to find him.
“That night I didn’t sleep, because they were knocking on the door, loud shouting,” Fowsia Abdullah said. “They were all over. People knocking on the people’s doors and asking, ‘Can we look around and check if you have the son?’”
Other neighbors said they were terrified when they were awakened by these people banging on their doors in the middle of the night.
Neighbors said the knocking stopped when the shooting started.
Abdullah remembered Hassan as a nice guy.
“I don’t know why they did that,” Abdullah said of the shooter.
Abdullah said Hassan’s death is especially sad because he brought his family to America to escape bullets in his home country.
In the police report, the Millers said Hassan fired at them first.
Police also released 911 calls from moments after Blaise was abducted. His father, Xavier Barnett, frantically told dispatchers that someone had taken the car with his son inside.
“I took my nephew in the house and put all my bags in the house,” he says. “I came back out, everything gone.”
He told the dispatcher he saw a man walking down the street, but that he was all the way across the street. Barnett said he didn’t know anyone in the area who could have targeted him.
The SUV that Blaise was abducted in was found without the child inside near the shooting scene at Brannon Hills on Wednesday afternoon.
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Blaise was found safe in a car less than a mile from his home Thursday morning. He has since been reunited with his family. It’s still unclear where the baby was in the 36 hours he was missing.
Channel 2 Action News was at the scene when Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents carried Blaise from the home where he was found. The child was treated at the hospital and released back to his family.
Police have not identified the suspect they believe took the baby.
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