Restaurant customer Adam Abdur-Rahma slain in holdup

A customer coming out of the kitchen of an African restaurant with a box of carry-out food was shot and killed Monday night when he walked into a robbery in progress and startled the two men holding up the eatery, police and patrons said.

The man was a regular at Madina – an Ethiopian-Somalian restaurant that takes up half of a building of the former Captain D's across from the Memorial Bend shopping center on Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain.

Because he was so well known to the employees, Adam Abdur-Rahman, 28, had gone into the kitchen to pick up his nightly order of rice and goat meat. He came out to find two armed men demanding that the cashier open up the register, diners inside the restaurant later recounted.

The cashier, Farah Burali, said he doesn't exactly know what happened next. But Burali felt the gun that had been pointed at his temple move and heard a shot.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Abdur-Rahman, a baker, sprawled in a corner, dead of a bullet to the head. The two suspects sprinted out without taking any money. According to police, a third man was involved in the hold-up. That man was waiting outside, patrons said.

"I was giving them the money," Burali said. "They didn't give me a chance."

It was almost closing time at the eatery when it was held up shortly after 10 p.m. Most of the cash had already been taken out, Burali said.

The register only held $60.

As news of the shooting spread, about four dozen people converged in the parking lot, behind yellow police tape. As Abdur-Rahman's body was carried out, men stood with arms crossed, shaking their heads in disbelief, and a group of women sat on a sidewalk, wailing and holding up their hands.

"It doesn't really matter whether we [knew him] or not," said Ilyas Ahmed, 37. "He was a Somali and he was a Muslim brother."

The restaurant is named for the second holiest city in Islam; the death came on the eve of one of the holiest day of the religion, Eid-al-Adha.

The man leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter who lives with her mother, his ex-wife, in Ethopia, said his roommate Said Mohamed. On what would otherwise have been a festive day for the family, said diner Mohamed Kamil, they will now have to deal with the saddest news imaginable.