It was just another quiet Friday night when 19-year-old twins Naazir and Qaadir Lewis stopped at a Shell gas station near their suburban Atlanta home.
Security footage showed them refueling their black Nissan Altima, buying snacks, and chatting casually, a typical moment of teenage normalcy.
By the next morning, both young men were dead.
As previously reported, their bodies were discovered March 8 at the top of Bell Mountain, a remote lookout nearly 90 miles north near Georgia’s border with North Carolina.
They were found lying side by side, each with a colorful anime-style sword nearby.
A .45 caliber handgun rested between Naazir’s legs.
Authorities with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) ruled the case a double suicide, citing forensic evidence that both brothers fired the weapon. But months later, their family insists the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion.
A mystery that doesn’t sit right
“The way the bodies were positioned, the way the gun was placed, it all looked staged,” said Daryl Manns, attorney for the twins’ father, Tyrese Lewis. “It just doesn’t look like what you’d expect in a suicide.”
According to the GBI’s 300-page case file, obtained this week by CNN, each brother died from a close-range gunshot wound to the right side of the head.
Investigators found no evidence of third-party involvement, and digital records showed the twins researching firearms and suicide in the days before their deaths.
Still, relatives say nothing in the boys’ lives pointed to such an outcome.
“They were inseparable, nerdy, full of energy,” their aunt Antoinette Lewis told investigators. “They loved anime, video games, and spent hours debating about things like Harry Potter.”
Signs of struggle – and denial
The GBI file paints a more complicated picture. In the weeks before the tragedy, Naazir reportedly confided to a girlfriend in Boston that he was struggling with money and tension at home.
He also showed her a handgun, claiming he needed it for protection.
Records show the weapon had been reported stolen months earlier from another Atlanta suburb. Investigators have not determined how the twins obtained it, according to the CNN report.
In late February, Naazir ordered ammunition online and began searching for information about loading and firing a 1911-style pistol. On March 7, the night before their bodies were found, one of the twins searched “how to load a gun” on YouTube.
The final hours
Cell phone and surveillance data trace their movements: the Shell station stop at 9:30 pm a drive north into the Georgia mountains, and their arrival at Bell Mountain just after midnight, PEOPLE reports.
The gate to the overlook should have been locked after sunset, but a local sheriff’s deputy had reportedly left it open.
When a hiker found the bodies the next morning, a red backpack lay nearby containing ammunition, one of the twins’ phones, and a notebook with a handwritten line: “Journey to the Afterlife.”
Inside the Nissan, investigators found rope, an unopened bottle of Fireball whisky, and a plane ticket to Boston, a trip Naazir had planned to take that weekend.
Unanswered questions
Despite the GBI’s conclusion, the twins’ family remains unconvinced.
They’ve launched GoFundMe to hire a private investigator, hoping to uncover new clues.
“None of it makes sense,” said their stepmother, Kaarini Gitata.
“They weren’t hikers. They wouldn’t drive that far in that car. And they were making plans for the future.”
The GBI has officially closed the case. But for the Lewis family, the search for answers, and for peace, continues.