Midtown Atlanta shooting suspect Deion Patterson who was arrested yesterday, after an eight-hour manhunt that threw a major American city into fear and chaos, will be appearing in court today, Thursday.
Patterson now faces four counts of aggravated assault and one count of murder. He’s scheduled to go before a Fulton County judge at 11 a.m. Thursday, Fox5atlanta reports.
The manhunt for the Midtown Atlanta shooting suspect Deion Patterson ended when barking dogs at a suburban condo complex led to the arrest of a US Coast Guard veteran suspected of fatally shooting a woman and injuring four in a medical waiting room in the bustling heart of Atlanta, authorities said, CNN reports.
The Midtown Atlanta shooting suspect, Deion Patterson, 24, faces one count of murder and four counts of aggravated assault, Fulton County jail records show. He is expected to make his first court appearance on Thursday.
Patterson had sought treatment around noon Wednesday at the Northside Medical Midtown facility because he was dissatisfied with care he was getting from the Department of Veterans Affairs, his mother told investigators, according to a high-level source with the Atlanta Police Department.
But when doctors wouldn’t give him the anti-anxiety drug Ativan, Patterson got angry, his mother told CNN affiliate WSB. He pulled a handgun and began firing, the source told CNN, then took off on foot, stole a vacant pickup truck idling at a gas station and drove it north to Cobb County.
With schools and businesses on lockdown for miles around, police drew on camera technology systems and information from Patterson’s family to blanket the zone, finally getting a tip that spurred an undercover officer into a foot chase with the suspect Wednesday night at the gated complex, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer said.
“Technology played a huge role,” he said. “But technology doesn’t do any good without people who are determined to capture an individual who would do something like this. And today we saw where those two things came together in an amazing way.”
The attack marked one of 192 mass shootings this year in the United States with four or more people shot, excluding a gunman, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Federal health worker Amy St. Pierre, 38, died on the scene, the Fulton County medical examiner’s office said, as four other injured women were rushed to a nearby hospital, according to police.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens condemned the attack as “a horrible act of gun violence.”
“Equally horrifying is that we know that this is not unique in our country,” he said in a news conference, calling for enhanced gun control legislation.
“There’s a lot of talk about Second Amendment rights,” the Democrat said. “We need more actions about the rights of our citizens to go about their lives – to be able to go to a doctors office, to a supermarket, to a gas station or to their school without the threat of being gunned down.”
Patterson served with the Coast Guard from 2018 until his discharge in January, the military branch said.
Midtown Atlanta shooting Suspect fled in stolen pickup truck, police say
Officers were first called to the scene at 12:08 p.m. ET, said Atlanta Police Department Chief Darin Schierbaum.
Annie Eaveson, who lives a block from the medical center, told CNN her apartment building was placed on lockdown as the incident unfolded.
“I saw two people taken out on stretchers. Waves of armored officers went inside in shifts almost. You can see medical professionals huddled up in offices.”
But the Midtown Atlanta shooting Patterson had fled the building on foot, quickly making his way to a nearby gas station, according to Charles Hampton, Atlanta police’s Deputy Chief of Criminal Investigations.
The Atlanta Police Department released surveillance images Wednesday afternoon and tweeted that the “suspect (is) still at large.”
There, a “camera network system” caught footage of the suspect stealing a pickup truck that had been left running and unattended, Hampton said. The truck’s tag was then submitted to a license plate reader system, he said.
At about 12:30 p.m., license plate readers spotted the truck in neighboring Cobb County, which is about 15 miles from the scene of the attack, the deputy chief said.
Cobb County officials were immediately notified, Hampton said, and officers there began scouring the area for the vehicle, according to VanHoozer, the Cobb County police chief.
Midtown Atlanta shooting suspect Patterson captured in private condo complex, residents say
As the search stretched into the afternoon and evening, Cobb County law enforcement were receiving a wave of calls reporting possible sighting of the suspect, creating a “chaotic scene” as officers responded to several false alarms, VanHoozer said.
“These are massively complex investigations and information comes in so quickly,” the chief said Wednesday night. “It is so confusing and so contradicting that we find that we are often trying to go three or four different places very quickly – each seeming to be the suspect.”
Patterson was finally captured in a gated condominium complex in the county, residents told CNN.
Christy Colwell, a Waterford Place resident, said dogs barking within the complex led her to worry that the suspect could be hiding in the pool area, which includes a gazebo. She said she informed a police officer who was at the facility responding to a noise call.
“He just started running – the police officer – and said, ‘Get on the grass! Get on the grass!’” said resident Debra Sansavieri.
“Suddenly about 30 police cars came flying down.”
A police crime center operator also alerted officers to a 911 call they believed was likely about the suspect, the chief said.
“We prioritized that call on the radio,” he said, adding both undercover and uniformed officers were sent to the scene.
“I believe … that an undercover officer was the one that originally saw and confronted this individual and was able to then have back-up from uniformed officers that came in and took him into custody without incident,” VanHoozer said.
VanHoozer credited the successful capture in part to recent advances in police tracking technology.
“If you rewind the hand of time four years, we probably would not be where we are today, right now,” he said.