PHOENIX — Before the sun came up on Jan. 25, 2021, Phoenix police found a man dead inside a car off 27th and Glendale avenues.
What may have first looked like a single-car crash, they later believed to be murder.
Thirty-three-year-old Anthony James Martin II was shot in the torso, but so many questions remain: Why? By who?
Darlene McKissick has asked those questions every day for the last two months.
"I'm at the same place that I was when they first told me what happened," said McKissick. "There’s nothing new, there’s no new leads, there’s no nothing.”
McKissick says Martin moved to Arizona five years ago from St. Paul, Minnesota, where he grew up, to be closer to his youngest children.
"He was the protector of his family, he was the protector of everybody that he loves," she said. “It seems like we’re stuck moving forward because we just don’t know what happened.”
Living less than a half-hour away from Martin's family, Kanesha Walker is struggling to explain Martin's death to their 11-year-old son.
"He just doesn’t want to talk about it," said Walker. "When I told my son, he just kind of stormed out of the room and he was pretty silent for a couple of days."
Walker was still close with Martin, despite their split years ago. Walker says she talked to him just hours before his death.
"He was so happy and was talking about how well he was doing," she said. “He was just a good person; I don’t feel that he deserved what happened to him at all.”
With little to no details on his death, his family worries whether chances of an arrest may dwindle.
"All they keep telling me is, 'be patient, be patient, we’re working on this, be patient,'" said McKissick.
Phoenix Police say detectives are asking anyone with information to call Silent Witness at 480-WITNESS or 480-TESTIGO for Spanish.
