Family traumatized after finding missing child's body near southwest Atlanta home

ATLANTA - David Mack's family is trying to remember him as a joyful, active 12-year-old child as they struggle to cope with living without him.

"That just really upsets me," the child's grandmother Glenda Mack said. "It upsets me. I can't fathom something like that happening to him."

Mack said on Tuesday, David left their home near Shirley Street in southwest Atlanta to go play football with friends.

'He said, 'I love you' and I said, 'I love you too.' That was the last time I talked to him," she explained.

David never returned home.

Later that night, the family reported him missing to the Atlanta Police Department.

On Wednesday, investigators said loved ones found the boy's body behind a house near his grandmother's home.

His father told us the discovery is traumatizing.

"Those images are gonna be etched in my mind forever," his father Darius Mack explained. "I turned him over. I checked him. I took it all in. I allowed myself to. I made sure I did that."

Investigators said someone shot the 12-year-old.

His grandmother said it's hard to fathom that the grandson she raised from when he was a baby died all alone.

"Whoever killed him followed him cause he was coming back home. I don't think it was one person. He might have known the person," Glenda Mack said.

His family is now left with only "what could have been" of a young life tragically cut short.

The family said David wanted to work with technology and play football.

They've set up a fundraiser to help cover the 12-year-old's funeral.

He would have turned 13 next week.

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