ReportWire

Tag: USAGA

  • Police arrest suspect in fatal mass shooting at Atlanta medical center

    Police arrest suspect in fatal mass shooting at Atlanta medical center

    [ad_1]

    ATLANTA, May 3 (Reuters) – Police have arrested a former U.S. Coast Guardsman suspected of killing one person and wounding four, all of them women, in a shooting on Wednesday at a medical building in Atlanta, then carjacking a vehicle to flee the scene, authorities said.

    The suspected gunman, identified as Deion Patterson, 24, was taken into custody without incident after an undercover officer spotted him north of the city in suburban Cobb County several hours after the 12:30 p.m. shooting at the Northside Medical facility, police said.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an emailed statement that the woman killed was one of its employees, but did not identify her. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper identified the slain woman as Amy St. Pierre, citing her husband Julian St. Pierre.

    The motive for the shooting, and whether the suspect knew or targeted any of his victims, had yet to be determined, police said.

    “We know that he had an appointment at the facility, but why he did what he did, all of that is under investigation,” Atlanta’s deputy police chief of criminal investigations, Charles Hampton, said at a news briefing after the arrest.

    Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told an earlier press conference that it was too early in the investigation to determine if the five women who were shot were patients or employees.

    The woman who died was 39. The four wounded women ranged in age from 25 to 71, media reported. Three of them were in critical condition and underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, officials said. The fourth was treated at the hospital’s emergency room.

    Schierbaum described them as “fighting for their lives.”

    [1/5] Deion Patterson, who Atlanta Police describe as the suspect in a lunchtime mass shooting at a medical building, poses in an undated photograph. Atlanta Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

    Hampton said the gunman opened fire with a pistol and was only inside the medical center for about two minutes, then fled on foot and headed to a nearby gasoline station, where he commandeered a pickup truck that had been left running unattended and drove away.

    At one point during the hunt, police searched a building under construction that the suspect had entered near Battery Atlanta, a commercial complex being developed adjacent to Truist Park stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer told reporters. But that search came up empty-handed, he said.

    The suspect’s apparent proximity to the Battery “was a concern to us because many people would be at that location,” the chief said.

    Police analyzed a barrage of surveillance camera images and telephone tips from the public on sightings to ultimately narrow down the suspect’s location, VanHoozer said.

    The gunman arrived at the medical center with his mother, Schierbaum said, but she was not injured. Police said she and other family members were cooperating with investigators.

    Little was immediately known about the suspect’s background.

    The U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson joined the force in July 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January, after having last served as an electrician’s mate second class. No reason for his discharge was given.

    Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens decried the shooting as the latest act of carnage in what has become “a national epidemic of gun violence” turning schools, workplaces, churches and doctors’ offices into potential killing zones.

    He said active-shooter drills have become so common that a business in the area of Cobb County where Patterson was arrested happened to be conducting such an exercise as police closed in on the suspect nearby.

    Reporting by Rich McKay and Tyler Clifford; Editing by Doina Chiacu

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nine dead, more casualties expected after tornadoes rip through U.S. Southeast

    Nine dead, more casualties expected after tornadoes rip through U.S. Southeast

    [ad_1]

    ATLANTA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – At least nine people died in tornadoes that destroyed homes and knocked out power to tens of thousands in the U.S. Southeast, local officials said on Friday, and the death toll in hard-hit central Alabama was expected to rise.

    The storms on Thursday stretched from Mississippi to Georgia. At least five tornadoes touched down in central Alabama, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Jessica Laws. One of those twisters potentially tracked about 150 miles (241 km) from southwest Selma, Alabama, to the Georgia-Alabama state line, she said.

    Rescue teams were searching for missing people in Alabama’s Autauga County, where seven deaths have been reported, emergency management director Ernie Baggett said on MSNBC. He credited schools for saving more lives by not releasing students early.

    County coroner Buster Barber told Reuters the number of casualties would rise.

    “We are finding more bodies as we speak,” he said in a phone interview. “We’ve got search teams out in the area.”

    Storms damaged as many as 50 properties in Autauga County, according to the local sheriff’s office.

    In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp confirmed two people had died in Thursday’s storms. A 5-year-old child was killed after a tree fell on a car, leaving an adult passenger in critical condition as they were driving home, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said.

    A state employee also was killed while responding to the storm, Kemp said.

    Images from the severe storms showed widespread damage in Selma, a pivotal site of the U.S. civil rights movement. A tornado tore off rooftops and hurled debris. Multiple businesses and homes were destroyed, and trees were ripped from their roots.

    [1/5] Whole rooms are seen without walls on the second floor of a home the day after a tornado struck Dallas County near Selma, Alabama, U.S. January 13, 2023. Mickey Welsh/USA Today Network via REUTERS

    Residents were visibly shaken by the experience, and some counted themselves lucky to be alive.

    One woman began to cry as she described riding out the storm in her bathtub. She said the winds picked up her trailer, destroying everything inside.

    Ray Hogg said he found shelter inside a country club.

    “You could hear the roar, glass going everywhere,” he said. “You could hear the roof literally being torn off right over our heads.”

    Officials confirmed four tornadoes touched down in Georgia, largely southeast of Atlanta but causing damage across the state, with winds peeling off roofs, knocking down houses and uprooting trees.

    Just southeast of Atlanta, a freight train had three of its cars blown off the tracks, blocking traffic. No injuries from that incident were reported, officials said.

    Alabama Governor Kay Ivey on Thursday declared a state of emergency for the six counties of Autauga, Chambers, Coosa, Dallas, Elmore and Tallapoosa.

    Nearly 20,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us. The storm also led to power outages in neighboring states of Mississippi and Georgia.

    Tornado sirens in Monroe County in northeast Mississippi, where a twister made landfall, failed to activate as the storm moved through the area, local news reported.

    Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta
    Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Matthew Lewis and Josie Kao

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Viral video, opinions challenge Georgia jury selection for Arbery case

    Viral video, opinions challenge Georgia jury selection for Arbery case

    [ad_1]

    Oct 22 (Reuters) – A Georgia court struggled this week to seat jurors in the trial of three white men accused of murdering Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, underscoring the challenge of finding people who have not formed firm opinions based on a viral video of the shooting.

    “I saw the news footage and I saw the video footage of the crime, and I’ve already formed a guilty opinion of the crime,” one woman told the court earlier this week.

    Arbery’s killing just outside the coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia, in February 2020 stoked national outrage and protests after the cellphone video taken by one of the three defendants went viral.

    Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

    Defense lawyers and prosecutors say they are not looking for jurors who have not seen the video or don’t know about the case. Rather, they are trying to determine whether potential jurors can set aside any opinions they have and make a decision based on evidence presented to the court.

    Former policeman Gregory McMichael, 65; his son Travis McMichael, 35; and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, face charges of murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. If convicted on all charges, they could draw a maximum sentence of life in prison.

    Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley told prosecutors and defense attorneys to speed things up. “I am not comfortable with this,” he said of the pace on the first day of jury selection on Monday.

    As of late Thursday night, out of 80 Glynn County residents interviewed, only 23 residents had been prequalified for a group of 64, from which the ultimate 12 jurors and four alternates will be selected to hear the case.

    Walsley said on Thursday that selection could take well into next week or possibly the week after. The court was not in session on Friday; jury selection is slated to resume on Monday.

    CITIZEN’S ARREST DEFENSE

    Defense attorneys have said in interviews that they plan to base their case largely on a now-defunct version of a “citizen’s arrest” law that allows people in the state to detain someone they suspect of a crime. The three defendants told police they thought Arbery was a burglar and the shooting was in self-defense after Arbery grappled with a shotgun leveled by Travis McMichael.

    Arbery, an avid runner and former high school football star, was shot three times and fell on the street in the suburban neighborhood.

    One potential juror was dismissed because he watched the video more than six times and told the court he thought the men were “guilty. They killed him. They did it as a team.”

    Another said, “The only time I’ve heard of citizen’s arrest is in ‘The Andy Griffith show’,” the 1960s TV comedy about a small-town sheriff.

    The man added that he would listen to both sides in the case. “Everyone deserves their day in court. It’s the foundation of our country, it’s the rule of law.”

    Of the 80 people brought to court through Thursday, a few said they had seen only clips from the video, and only two people told the court they hadn’t seen it.

    “I didn’t want to see somebody killed,” said one man in his 70s.

    Chris Slobogin, a Vanderbilt University law professor, said picking fair juries is harder in the days of cellphones and social media.

    “I mean, everyone’s seen this video,” he said. “I believe the judge will eventually find 12 jurors, but the work is to figure out if a person is being forthright when they say they can set aside what they saw.”

    A nurse told the court that she had thought hard about whether she could be a fair, impartial juror and “prayed about it.”

    “I feel firmly that I could do that,” she said.

    Another potential juror, a retired auto shop owner, said it would be hard to disregard the video.

    “Some things you just can’t unsee,” he said.

    Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

    Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    [ad_2]

    Source link