13-year-old boy found dead in woods days after going missing, Georgia authorities say
A 13-year-old boy was found dead in the woods of an Atlanta-area community days after family members say he went missing, local outlets report.
DeKalb County officers arrived around 4:20 p.m. in the 2600 block of Parkway Trail in Lithonia on Monday, Sept. 19, and found the child’s body in a wood line behind a town home, police wrote in a news release. Officials are now working to determine his cause of death.
Additional details weren’t immediately available, but police said they’re investigating.
Authorities haven’t released the boy’s name, however, relatives identified him as Jamiren Crosby, WAGA reported. His mother, Chanell Crosby, said she last saw her son early Saturday, Sept. 17, after he left home with some friends. He never returned.
“He was my helper, he’d help me with my little daughter and my youngest son,” Crosby told the news station. “He was a real person. All he wanted was real around him — real love — wanted to be loved by his family.”
She said their family spent days searching for him before a passerby discovered his body on a trail near Lithonia Park, WXIA reported.
Virginia Montgomery said she was walking her daughter home from school when they made the gruesome discovery.
“I saw it. I said, ‘Wait a minute. That looks like somebody laying there,’ ” Montgomery told WSB-TV. “Whoever did this, y’all wrong.”
Jamiren’s grandmother, Sunni Broughton, said her grandson was in middle school and had recently moved to the area from Atlanta, according to WGCL. He made friends but began hanging out with “the wrong crowd.”
“This afternoon we got a call that a young lady was coming from school ... and she seen him lying down, holding onto a tree,” Broughton told the news station. “Somebody knows something.”
Authorities haven’t said if they have any suspects in the case.
Lithonia is about 20 miles east of downtown Atlanta.
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 11:19 AM with the headline "13-year-old boy found dead in woods days after going missing, Georgia authorities say."