‘He lost his daddy’: 24-year-old security guard, young father shot and killed at car dealership

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A 24-year-old security guard at a car dealership near the Mall of Stonecrest was shot and killed Saturday night, police said.

DeKalb County police responded to reports of a person shot around 11 p.m. at the Courtesy Chrysler Dodge car dealership at 8455 Mall Parkway. They found a man with a gunshot wound. He was taken to the hospital, where he died.

Police released a surveillance photo of five people outside the business. They are asking for the public’s help to identify them.

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Channel 2′s Ashli Lincoln spoke to the victim’s wife, Kyla Rushton, who works for the same security company. Rushton identified her husband as Henry Ashley.

She said she was on the phone with Ashley when he got the dispatch call that someone was on the property of the dealership. Rushton said Ashley was shot in the back.

“I shouldn’t be a 24-year-old widow because someone wanted a car,” she told Lincoln.

The couple has a 4-year-old son. The couple had recently talked about leaving the security business due to rising crime.

“I have to stay strong for my son. He lost his daddy,” Kyla Rushton said. “I hope whatever they wanted here was more important than his life. I hope they got what they wanted, taking a husband, a son, a father, a brother, so young. We were planning on buying a house this summer. This was our first time we were able to do this and it all got ripped away in a matter of moments.”

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Rushton says that she and Ashley had a strange feeling about his work shift on Saturday night.

“We were on the phone and he said the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck,” Rushton said.

That’s when she says Ashley got a call from dispatch that someone was on the property. Thirty minutes later, she says she got a call from the vice president of the company telling her that her husband had been shot and killed.

“My heart shattered into a million pieces, and my gut knew that something bad was wrong. I knew he wasn’t here,” she said.

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Rushton says she also works at the security company Ashley worked for. She says concerns have been growing amidst rising crime.

“I’ve had plenty of guards that I work with pulled at gunpoint. One of them just recently at a construction site was almost robbed at gunpoint,” she described.

She says she hopes an arrest comes soon.

“I just hope whoever did this they get caught. They get what’s coming to them. God knows what they deserve,” she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call investigators at 770-724-7850.

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