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Posted: 3:37 a.m. Monday, Sept. 24, 2012
By Jay Black and Daphne Young
News/Talk WSB
Atlanta police say they don’t know why a man killed his newlywed wife, her 12-year-old daughter and another woman.
Police still have not found a motive for the killings. 32-year-old Joseph Rennato Smith was charged with two of them Sunday night. He is expected to be charged for the third later today.
Smith was arrested Sunday afternoon following a SWAT standoff at the Cascades by Centex complex off Benjamin E. Mays Drive in Atlanta.
When police went inside the apartment they found the bodies of Smith’s wife Shatikey Griffin, 34, and her daughter 12-year-old Demiya Griffin.
"This is something that we never knew could happen," said Thaddues Griffin, who lost a daughter and granddaughter.
“We thought that he was a good guy so we don’t really know," Griffin said of Smith, who had just married his daughter a month ago.
A few miles away in East Point, Smith is linked to another murder. Loveitt Wallace, 36, was found dead in a room at the Wellesley Inn on Virginia Avenue Sunday morning.
East Point Police believe the woman was Smith's girlfriend.
Atlanta police questioned Smith late into the night, trying to find out why he killed the three women. They charged him with two counts of murder, one count of false imprisonment and another count of rape.
The youngest victim, Demiya Griffin, was a student at Kipp Ways Academy.
“Demiya was an incredibly sweet young girl who consistently demonstrated the school’s values and was a great teammate,” KIPP WAYS Academy principal Dwight Ho-Sang said in a statement released Sunday night. As an honor roll student who loved theater, Demiya had a very bright future ahead of her. We will miss her warm smile and bubbly personality.”
Her classmates already have the day off because of fall break. The school will provide grief counselors to students, the principal said in a statement.
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