Taking Action Against Crime, Unsolved Murders: Atrivius Perry

by WAKA Action 8 News

Alabama News Network is Taking Action Against Crime with unsolved murders. It’s part of a four-part series we’ve been bringing to you in hopes of generating new leads to solve these cold cases. Tonight, we have part 3.

More than two years ago, Atrivius Perry was found dead inside his Montgomery home after being robbed.  Alabama News Network wants to help investigators solve his killing and help Perry’s mother, who hasn’t even cleaned his blood off her floor since his death.

On June 5, 2012 Tonya Watkins and her son, Atrivius Perry, spent the day trying to call each other on the phone. They were trying to meet up, just as many parents do with their grown children, but it simply didn’t work out that day.

But early that next morning Watkins got the news no parent wants to hear — her son was found murdered.

Tonya Watkins had 90 missed calls, all around 2 a.m. on June 6, 2012. None were from her son, Atrivius Perry. The calls came from a cousin. The news she told her changed her life…
    
“She didn’t want to tell me over the phone that he was gone,” Said Watkins.

Gone. Robbed. Murdered. Investigators say it all happened inside his home.

Watkins couldn’t believe it, so she drove to the scene herself to find a crowd surrounding her son’s home here on Traction Avenue in Montgomery. Investigators told her Perry was shot.

“I still didn’t ask nobody nothing because in my mind I was like, ‘he’s alright. He’s going to be alright,'” Said Watkins. But minutes later, her uncle confirmed the worst.

“He said, ‘no man, he’s dead,'” Said Watkins as she replayed the words she heard in tears. “And when he said… and when he said that…. I just… I just couldn’t believe it.”

And to this day she and her daughter, Chandler Tyler, say it’s still hard to cope.

Investigators say the night Perry was killed, he drove home from the Top Flight nightclub, formerly known as the Centennial Hill Bar and Grill on Highland Avenue.

“So he pulled in the yard right here and left the car running with a young man in it inside the car,” Said Watkins.

Investigators say Perry came home from the nightclub, after receiving numerous calls from a woman staying at his home. They say she told them two males broke inside, where they held her at gunpoint while looking for money and other property.  That’s when investigators say Perry walked in the home.

“The witness said that she heard them ask him a question and then immediately after that, there was one gunshot,” Said Montgomery County District Attorney, Daryl Bailey.

The gunshot struck his back.

Blood stains still mark the living room against the door, wall and on the carpet.

“It’s been so devestating I don’t want know one to touch it,” Said Watkins, as she showed us the stains. “That’s what’s going on, but I really wanted everything to stay the same just as he left it.”

Watkins leaves the scene as is it was found on the day of the murder in hope that the the people who killed her son will be found.

“What made you want to think that you can come where we live and do something like this?” Said Marva Watkins, the victim’s grandmother. She was also on the scene the night of the murder.

His family says they won’t rest until the killers are caught.
    
“I try to walk out the room when I cry because I don’t want her to cry,” Said the victim’s sister, Chandler Tyler about her mom (Watkins). “But I can’t do it because… because… I miss my brother a lot. And I try, but I can’t.”

The District Attorney’s Office says Perry had cameras in almost every corner outside his home, except in the back. That’s where they believe the robbers came inside. None of the other camera’s were able to get video of the killers.

WHAT INVESTIGATORS ARE WORKING WITH:

At the time of the murder on June 6, 2012, investigators describe the two suspects as black men.

Suspect #1: 5’9″, 250 lbs. Dreadlocks, wearing black shirt.

Suspect #2: 5’6″, 130 lbs. Mohawk hairstyle.

There is an $11,000 reward for anyone who can help with a lead that solves this case.

If you have any information on Atrivius Perry’s murder, you’re asked to call Crimestoppers at 215-STOP or the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office at 334-832-7196.