4. Yusuf Bell
9 year old Yusuf (sometimes misspelled "Yusef" and "Yusaf") Ali Bell (4'7", 65lbs, DOB 31 Dec 1969) lived at 396 Rawson St. SW (NW?) in the McDaniel Glenn Housing Authority with his family, including mother, Camille Bell, sisters Tonia and Marie and brother, Jonathan, 12. His father was John I. Bell.
(Soon after, Camille moved to an apartment at 434 Fulton St. S.W. This home is now gone.) Yusuf attended 5th grade at Dunbar Elementary and went to Warren Memorial Boys' Club. His one-time babysitter, Juanita St. George, 32, was stabbed and killed in December 1981. |
 Camille's home  Camille, circa 2010  Camile Bell |
Reese Grocery
Yusuf was last seen (with no shirt or shoes) near the intersection of McDaniel and Fulton getting into a blue car in the 300 block of Fulton Street (near bushes between a fenced in playground and a redbrick apartment building) after buying Bruton snuff for a neighbor, Eula Birdsong, at Reese Grocery on McDaniel St. 3 black males were questioned. The witness who saw him get into the car said that the driver looked like Yusuf's father, Camille's ex-husband John Bell. Camille claimed this witness was untrustworthy because of her drinking problem. Mr. Bell had insisted that Yusuf would be found safe. He also "failed" a polygraph test.
1645-1730 Sunday 21 October 1979
1645-1730 Sunday 21 October 1979
Yusuf's body was found in the empty (since 1973) and since razed E.P. Johnson Elementary building (494 Martin St. S.E.) in a crawlspace by a school janitor, 30 year old John Henry Tye (of 769 Fraser St. SE), looking for a place to urinate.
He was found only in the cut-off brown shorts he was last seen in, with a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice, and the cause of death listed was asphyxiation by manual strangulation.
08 November 1979 ~0930-1000
He was found only in the cut-off brown shorts he was last seen in, with a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice, and the cause of death listed was asphyxiation by manual strangulation.
08 November 1979 ~0930-1000
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   Funeral services were held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13th, 1979 at Greater Mount Calvary Baptist Church, and he was buried in the South-View Cemetery.
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Johnathan Bell, at the Save Our Children Prayer Pilgrimage on Auburn Ave
