Twenty years ago this month, 23-year-old Artdrunetta Hobbs went to Greenbriar Mall in southwest Atlanta with friends and never came home. Her car was later found burned, she has not been heard from since, and her mother is still asking the public for any piece of information that could finally explain what happened to her.
According to WSB-TV, Hobbs vanished on August 10, 2006, shortly after that trip to the mall, and authorities eventually found her car burned. Her mother, Tonjala Harris, has said she knew something was wrong almost immediately and has spent the years since organizing searches and pushing investigators for updates. Police believe Hobbs was kidnapped and murdered, though the case has never resulted in a conviction, and no one has ever been charged in either her death or her disappearance.
Earlier reporting from 95.5 WSB, published in February 2022, fills in some of the details that have circulated among family and volunteers over the years. Family members told that station that Hobbs was abducted from her residence in the 2600 block of Butner Road in southwest Atlanta, saying individuals tied her hands and forced her into a vehicle. An Atlanta Police Department missing persons record cited by the station indicates Hobbs' own car, a gold 1995 Toyota Avalon sedan, was later located abandoned and burned along Fulton Industrial Highway, a major industrial corridor in west Fulton County.
Searches at Melvin Drive Park Have Turned Up Grim False Leads
Harris and volunteers have repeatedly searched parks in the years since her daughter disappeared, according to WSB-TV, and much of that effort has centered on the 42-acre Melvin Drive Park in southwest Atlanta. Volunteers working with the family previously found one of Hobbs' shoes in the park's wooded terrain, per the station's earlier reporting.
That same park has produced false hope before. During an August 2007 search there, investigators recovered a human skull, a pelvic bone, and a shotgun, but forensic testing determined the remains belonged to an unrelated homicide victim, not Hobbs, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta. In 2022, Harris organized another round of volunteer searches at the park after receiving a social media message claiming her daughter's body was buried there, the station reported at the time — a tip that, like so many before it, did not bring the resolution the family was hoping for.
A Prison Death and an Unproven Theory
Police previously told Channel 2 Action News they believe one person responsible for Hobbs' case died in prison while serving time for another crime. No one, however, has ever been convicted of her death or her murder, leaving the family without the legal closure that a conviction would bring. Harris has said she hopes to find her daughter or her remains and wants to give her a proper burial.
Greenbriar Mall, where Hobbs was last seen with friends before she vanished, has its own long history in southwest Atlanta. The mall opened in 1965 as one of the region's first enclosed shopping centers and was the site of the world's first Chick-fil-A restaurant in 1967, according to the Atlanta History Center. It served as a commercial anchor for the neighborhood for decades, a backdrop that makes Hobbs' disappearance from such an ordinary errand all the more unsettling for those who remember her.
New State Law Could Offer a Path Forward
Georgia lawmakers created a new tool for families like Harris's in July 2023, when the state enacted the Coleman-Baker Act. Under the law, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation allows designated family members to formally request review and potential reinvestigation of unsolved homicides older than three years. The law's rollout included a $5.4 million state appropriation to fund ten full-time agents in the GBI's Cold Case Homicide Unit, tasked with evaluating eligible unsolved cases across the state.
Hobbs' case also sit s within a broader, well-documented pattern. National Crime Information Center statistics published by the Black and Missing Foundation show Black individuals account for nearly 40% of missing person reports nationwide, despite making up roughly 14% of the U.S. population — a disparity advocacy groups say has long meant less media attention and investigative urgency for cases involving Black women and girls.
Hobbs' case remains open with the Atlanta Police Department, whose missing adult and unsolved homicide cases fall under the Major Crimes Section's Homicide Unit at police headquarters on Peachtree Street SW. Harris and volunteers say they still hope someone will come forward with the tip that finally leads to closure, twenty years after Artdrunetta Hobbs walked out the door and never came back.
