CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — The heartbroken mother of Anthony “Chyna” McClain said Thursday that, without her son--who was 18 when he was shot to death last year outside the barbershop she and her son owned in Clayton County--she feels like she is living a life sentence in prison.
She spoke with 11Alive after one of the suspects, who was still on the run, shot and killed himself earlier in the day.
The Clayton County Sheriff’s fugitive squad members were minutes away from capturing the suspect at an apartment complex on Welcome All Road in the City of South Fulton.
The suspect—Aliouny Fall—was one of at least four suspects accused in the shooting death of McClain on April 2, 2022.
Arrest warrants for Fall, on charges that included murder, were obtained by Clayton County Police just this week.
McClain’s mother, Norma Huff, said she was hoping that Fall, and at least one other suspect still on the run, would both just surrender; and she wished she could tell them, “Turn yourself in. You know, you have a chance at life. You still have a chance at life. But you have to face the consequences of your actions.”
Aliouny Fall was cornered on Thursday, with nowhere to run, as the fugitive squad moved in, surrounding his hiding place in the apartment complex.
Suddenly, “Some people ran out and said that someone had been shot inside of an apartment from a self-inflicted gun wound,” said Clayton County Sheriff Levon Allen. “The actual suspect that we were looking for was the one who had succumbed to self-inflicted injuries.”
So, just over a year after several men got into a dispute, according to police, and opened fire outside Anthony McClain’s barbershop--killing McClain, an innocent victim, in the crossfire:
One of the suspects, Aliouny Fall, is now dead; two others have been arrested, Jaimonnie Watkins-Causey and Rontavius Deon Holt; and at least one more is still on the run, Jamoriyan Eutsey.
And Anthony McClain’s mother, Norma Huff, is waging her war against gun violence. She wears an orange jumpsuit every day.
“The jumpsuit signifies, as a mother, I've received life (in ‘prison’), Huff said. “My son will never come back. This never gets better. I'm serving life. My son was sentenced to death.”
It is a death that she knows, in her heart, was not the end of his spirit.
His barber’s chair and station are decorated in his honor and memory, a way for his mother to tell customers his story of accomplishment and promise.
“Anthony will always be with us,” Huff said, “he'll always be with us.... a kid that any mother would want.... He excelled at everything, he loved everyone.... He was in school, his ultimate goal was to become an oral surgeon.”
And she’ll be able to move on, she said, when all the suspects have been held accountable.
“For me, I still haven't cried, yet,” she said, “I have a lot of things that I need to do to, to seek what I need to, through the courts.... I just want to continue making sure that Anthony is living. You know, because he lives, he lives.”