ATLANTA – Police say they have arrested a man who allegedly opened fire in the waiting room of an Atlanta medical center, killing one woman and injuring four others Wednesday.
Authorities had swarmed the bustling downtown neighborhood earlier in the day in search of the suspect, who fled after the shooting. Police said in a statement that the gunman, who they identified as 24-year-old Deion Patterson, was captured Wednesday evening. Authorities did not immediately release additional information about where Patterson was found.
Authorities said Patterson stole a vehicle and drove off after shooting five women on the 11th floor of a Northside medical building shortly after noon. The facility is in a commercial area filled with office towers and high-rise apartments, and news of the shooting sent workers and diners sheltering in place for hours.
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said a 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting. The four injured victims were also women, aged 25, 39, 56 and 71.
Hours after the shooting, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told reporters that the surviving victims are “fighting for their lives at Grady Hospital.”
Patterson’s mother, Minyone Patterson, told The Associated Press by phone that her son, a former Coast Guardsman, had “some mental instability” from the medication he received from the Veterans Affairs health system that start taking on friday. She said she didn’t know where her son was.
She said her son had wanted Ativan to deal with anxiety and depression, but the VA wouldn’t give it to him because they said it would be “too addictive.” She is a nurse and said she told them she would have taken just the right dose “because she listened to me in every way.”
“Those families, those families,” she said, starting to cry. “They’re hurting because they wouldn’t give my son his damn Ativan. Those families lost loved ones because he got a mental break because they didn’t listen to me.”
She ended the call without saying what medication her son had been taking.
After receiving information that the shooter may have entered Cobb County, investigators checked surveillance and traffic cameras and found that the vehicle he appeared to be driving had entered Cobb County around 12 p.m.: 30 hours, Cobb County Police Sgt. Wayne Delk said.
That discovery set off a massive search in the county northwest of Atlanta.
Delk said Atlanta police recovered the vehicle in a parking lot near the Battery, a mixed-use development adjacent to the stadium where the Atlanta Braves play.
In a statement, the US Coast Guard said Patterson had joined the service in 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January. At the time he was an electrician’s mate second class.
Crime Stoppers was offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the suspect.
Around the time of the shooting, Cassidy Hale, a medical device representative, said she was driving into the facility to check on a machine in the ambulatory surgery center on the building’s 12th floor.
Hale saw fire trucks, but didn’t realize anything was wrong until he parked and found the elevator not working. Hale said he called the operating room director, who told him there was an active shooter and he needed to get back in his car.
Hale said police stopped her from leaving the parking lot and then checked each car and took her in for an interview.
He then met with other employees and patients in a building across the street, where he said “everyone was really in shock” and “trying to process what was happening.”
The shooting comes as US cities have been ravaged by gun violence and mass shootings in 2023.
Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia took to the Senate floor to denounce gun violence and urge his colleagues to move forward on gun reform.
“There have been so many mass shootings … that, tragically, we act as if this is routine,” the Democrat said during a 12-minute speech. “We act like this is normal. It’s not normal.”
The Atlanta pastor added, “I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it’s only a matter of time before this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door.”
Georgia’s other U.S. senator, Jon Ossoff, also a Democrat, echoed his colleague in a statement issued Wednesday evening: “The level of gun violence in America today is unthinkable and unacceptable, and those responsible politicians at all levels have a responsibility to ensure public safety and implement long-awaited reforms”.
