Victim of Atlanta shooting spent teen years in metro area

Christian Broder’s last social media post celebrated three of his passions: wine, food and his family. Broder, a restaurant manager and sommelier from Washington, D.C., shared a photo on Instagram of an Italian white, Sicilian anchovies and his wife, Molly.

A little more than two weeks later, Broder traveled to Atlanta for the wedding of a family friend. His wife stayed home with their 9-month-old daughter.

Early on July 8, 2018, as he left the wedding with his brother and two friends, Broder was shot in the abdomen during a robbery outside the Capital City Club in Atlanta’s Historic Brookhaven neighborhood. Broder, 34, died 12 days later.

His death sparked outrage after news reports that his accused killer, Jayden Myrick, then 17, was a repeat juvenile offender who had been released after serving two years of a seven-year sentence for robbing an Atlanta woman at gunpoint.

Broder’s family started a petition drive seeking to remove Fulton County Superior Court Judge Doris Downs, who had released Myrick. Downs later went on senior-judge status, with a reduced caseload.

Broder was born in Texas and moved with his family to the Atlanta area when he was 13. He attended Woodward

Academy, the private school in College Park, and then the College of Charleston. He managed several locations of a Washington restaurant owned by his brother-in-law.

Earlier this year, Molly Broder sued the Capital City Club, claiming it failed to take reasonable steps to ensure security outside its gates. The club responded that Broder was on a public street at the time of the shooting, not on its property.

Members of Broder’s family declined to be interviewed, in part to avoid jeopardizing the criminal case against Myrick.

CONTRIBUTED Christian Broder with his wife, Molly, and daughter. He was shot in July 2018 outside the Capital City Club in Atlanta and later died.