Family searched for loved one for days. Turns out he had died in car crash

ATLANTA — Family members spent several days wondering where a local father might be, only to discover he had been killed in a car accident.

Police said Ryan Finch got into a wreck near the Flat Shoals exit on I-285 East and died as a result.

For six days, the family did not know where he was and they want answers.

Finch's fiance Chasity Strozier said he was everything to her and their children.

"He did everything for everybody, everybody around him. He was so giving and so loving," she told Channel 2's Tyisha Fernandes.

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When he didn’t come home the night of Sept. 13 and still wasn’t home to take the kids to school the next day, she and the rest of his family knew something was terribly wrong.

Finch’s brother filed a police report with the Atlanta Police Department that day.

"We called every hospital, we called every jail several times, all three of us. We even went to them. No one told us what was going on," Strozier said.

A family friend called around to several tow yards in metro Atlanta and found Finch’s red pickup truck in DeKalb County.

"The guy told her, 'The guy that was driving it didn’t survive,'" said Finch's mother, Altamese Finch.

Fernandes spoke to the DeKalb County coroner on the phone and he said DeKalb police identified Finch on the night of the crash.

He had his identification on him and his truck was registered to him.

On Thursday night, Fernandes went to DeKalb County police headquarters to find out why they never got in touch with the family.

They said DeKalb County detectives made several attempts to contact the family. When police conducted a database search of the victim’s license tag, they said the phone number associated with it was the victim’s cellphone and the address was not current.

The family told Fernandes that’s not true.

"We did everything. No one told us anything. His friends knew before his mom knew. Come on, that’s not right," Strozier said.

Cox Media Group