COLUMBUS, GA---Columbus Police are investigating a homicide at Gold and Silver Trading Center on Gentian Boulevard. Witnesses say the store manager was killed sometime last night. They say the owner found him when he came to work this morning.
"I don't know why anyone would want to do this. Steve would have gave them everything in the store, I know he would. So they didn't have to kill him," Steve Toms' sister, Sandra Whitehurst, says.
Family and friends are mourning the loss of 63-year-old Steve Toms, who they say they believe was shot and killed during a robbery.
"He was nice to everybody. I love my brother very much. He was just a super brother and he would do anything for anybody," Whitehurst says.
Hadley Scott, the daughter of Gold and Silver owner Robert Upchurch, says the store closes at six p.m.
She says her father found Toms, who worked at the "little white house" for about three decades, when he came into the store this morning around nine.
Scott says Upchurch is in complete shock.
Local business owners say they didn't see anything suspicious last night.
"To be honest, I didn't see anything that was out of the ordinary. For the most part, cars were coming and going, it's a relatively busy shopping center. I didn't notice or see anything out of the ordinary until probably about seven o'clock I noticed the red Mercedes was still here and it just seemed odd to me that it was still there this late," Robbie Gauthier, owner of Big and Easy Wings, says.
Gauthier says he still feels comfortable opening his restaurant in the same shopping complex.
"It really doesn't make me feel any different about the area, about the shopping center, about Columbus. It's one of those things where anything can happen at any place," Gauthier says.
Police have not released any names of suspects or made any arrests. Scott says the shop did have camera surveillance.
Toms also owned the Columbus bar Duffy's.He bought the bar in June of this year.
According to the Muscogee County Coroner's Office, Toms' body has been sent to Atlanta for autopsy.
