The teenager, Omarian Banks, approached the apartment about 12:30 a.m. Friday and began knocking on the door under the impression that his girlfriend was inside, police said. After Banks, 19, walked away, a man inside appeared on his second-floor balcony to confront him and opened fire.
The suspected gunman, Darryl I. Bynes, 32, has been charged with murder.
Banks’ girlfriend, Zsakeria Mathis, 23, had been waiting for Banks because he had called and asked her to open the door. The conversation lasted three seconds.
“I went to open the door and he wasn’t standing right there,” Mathis said Sunday. Mathis could not see Banks so she started walking out of her apartment and soon heard faint voices.
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“The voices were not loud enough to be an argument or an altercation,” Mathis said. She said she soon heard a gunshot.
“It stopped me in my tracks,” Mathis said. Then she heard her boyfriend apologize for the mix-up.
“I’m sorry, I’m at the wrong house,” Banks said, according to Mathis. She said she then heard a man use a racial slur and say, “Nah, you’re at the right house” — followed by two more gunshots.
She said she saw Banks on the grass and ran to him as she screamed his name but he did not respond. “He had tears in his eyes and I noticed the gunshot to his neck, and I screamed, ‘Somebody help me!’” Mathis said.
Police said Bynes and Banks had a “verbal exchange” before Bynes fired a handgun three times from his balcony. Banks was pronounced dead at the scene.
Bynes is being held without bail. A lawyer listed in court records for Bynes could not be immediately reached Sunday.
Banks, who was a crew chief at a McDonald’s restaurant, had just left his mother’s house, his mother, Lisa Johnson, said Sunday.
“He said he was tired,” Johnson said. “Normally his girlfriend would pick him up, but she sent a Lyft for him, and 30 minutes later she was on the phone saying he was dead.”
Mathis and Banks, who turned 19 in March, had been living at the apartment complex for eight months, Johnson said. She said Bynes’ apartment looked identical to her son’s from the outside, making it easy to mistake for his own.
Mathis said Banks always called her when he was close to home.
“I always open the door,” she said. “Every other time he has always been there, but that time he got out in front of the wrong doorway.”
Bynes faced charges of driving without a valid license in 2015 and possession of marijuana in 2010, according to court records. The disposition of those cases was not immediately available.
Bynes’ family said he acted in self-defense and to protect his children because his car had been stolen earlier in the week, WSB-TV reported. Police on Sunday could not immediately confirm if he had reported his car stolen.
Johnson said she was trying to make sense of her son’s death.
“I don’t understand. I am dealing with the why,” she said. “How someone could be that evil to just shoot someone that clearly made a mistake and was begging you for their life? This was a kid that was fleeing.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.