Gunman injures 3 people in Atlanta food court before being shot by officer, police say | WJHL

Police respond to the scene of a shooting outside the Peachtree Center complex, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in downtown Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy)

ATLANTA (AP) — A gunman fatally shot three people in a downtown Atlanta food court before being fatally shot by a police officer Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.

All four people shot in the Peachtree Center food court are expected to survive, including the suspect, according to Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum.

At a news conference, Mayor Andre Dickens praised the officer who wounded the shooter.

“If he hadn’t been there, things might have gotten worse,” Dickens said.

Peachtree Center is a complex of office towers and underground shopping mall located just blocks from several hotels serving Atlanta’s busy convention area.

The shooting happened around 2:15 p.m., Schierbaum said.

The three people shot by the suspect were a 47-year-old man from Grayson, a 69-year-old woman from East Point and a 70-year-old woman from Atlanta, Schierbaum said.

The suspect, a 34-year-old man from Morrow, just south of Atlanta, had a “brief altercation” with one of the victims and pulled out a gun and shot that person, Schierbaum said. He then shot the other two people.

The four people were hospitalized and two are in critical condition, the mayor said.

An off-duty Atlanta police officer who was working security at the food court attacked the man, then shot and injured him. The officer “acted decisively, put himself in harm’s way and ended this threat to the community,” Schierbaum said.

The suspect had already been arrested several times and served a prison sentence for armed robbery. Because of that prior felony conviction, he shouldn’t have had a gun, Schierbaum said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting, which is standard practice in the state when a police officer shoots someone.

In the aftermath of the shooting, crowds of people gathered at a nearby intersection, many of them wondering what had happened. Several blocks of Peachtree Street were blocked off with crime scene tape as police and firefighters converged on the scene.

Elizabeth Ingram, of Atlanta, was leaving the break room at the Chick-fil-A where she works when she heard the first gunshots nearby.

“We relaxed for a minute, then we heard more shots,” she said. “So we went back down.”

Ingram said he saw people leaving on stretchers.

“You never know what can happen,” she says. “It happened out of nowhere. It was so scary that I thought I was never going to go home to my son and it scared me. My heart was beating so fast.