Fox5ATL: man found stabbed at 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue, later died from injuries; suspect in custody
For those unaware, 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown Atlanta is a Kroger grocery store located right off of the famed Atlanta Beltline, which I like to call the Jesus Sidewalk because it’s basically a gigantic fucking sidewalk that runs a big ass circle within the city limits of Metro Atlanta, unintentionally creating another hoop of segregation for snobs to flex just how Atlanta they are based on where they live in proximity or within it.
However, it’s not just any Kroger grocery store, but it’s the address of what was once infamously known as Murder Kroger, whereas the name sake implies, several deaths had occurred. As the Beltline project grew, everyone knew that the OG Murder Kroger was going to get torn down and redeveloped, but the popular joke was that the building could be torn down and massive image rehabilitation could be undertaken, but the general fact that this address would forever be known as Murder Kroger was never going to change.
Longtime Atlantans would always know 725 Ponce as Murder Kroger, and no amount of Jesus sidewalk adjacency or fancy mixed-use buildings being erected on that spot was ever going to change that.
A few months ago, I made a tongue-in-cheek observation after multiple incidents tied to Kroger stores in the Metro Atlanta area where death has unfortunately occurred, that the spirit of Murder Kroger was a lot like the concept of The Grudge, where even leaving the accursed house in Japan didn’t save victims from being cursed by it, and that it was capable of traveling. 725 Ponce might have been rechristened and redeveloped, but the grudge of Murder Kroger was never going to go anywhere, and it had apparently traveled to other Kroger locations in the area, spreading its curse of death towards Decatur and east.
But lest the Grim Reaper of Atlanta forget where their base of operations lie, it didn’t take long before yet another auspicious incident happened at 725 Ponce, where a serial criminal with allegedly over 30 arrests, stabbed a guy on the Jesus Sidwalk, close enough to Murder Kroger to where the infamous 725 Ponce address was what was reported as the scene of the crime.
How a man with as many arrests on his record was somehow allowed to be on the streets in the first place is beyond me, but from what I could tell, he was white and I guess that says everything we already need to know. But he still took it upon himself to play Judge Judy and executioner and took a life, and the question really is, did the location of the incident make this happen, or was the haunts of past visit to Murder Kroger compelling him to drop another human being?
And seeing as how the victim unfortunately succumbed to their wounds, all joking aside, it’s safe to say that Murder Kroger has claimed yet another life. Like I said, you can tear the building down, build it back up as something fancy and modern, slather some shiny new paint on it, and attach it to the Jesus Sidewalk. But Murder Kroger is never going to go away, and nothing short of a Shinto exorcism is probably going to have a snowflake’s chance in hell at getting rid of this curse.
