Atlanta shooting suspect charged with murder and four counts of aggravated assault
The man accused of opening fire inside an Atlanta medical facility was charged with murder and four counts of aggravated assault, jail records showed on Thursday.
Deion Duwane Patterson, 24, is accused of shooting five women before he evaded police during an eight-hour-long manhunt on Wednesday, officials said.
He did not appear in court as scheduled on Thursday, waiving his right to see a judge within 24 hours of his arrest. His next scheduled court date was not immediately set.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee Amy St. Pierre, 39, was killed with a semi-automatic handgun, according to an affidavit written by Atlanta police officer Scott Demeester.
In a statement posted to Twitter Thursday, the federal agency said: "CDC is deeply saddened by the unexpected loss of a colleague killed yesterday in the Midtown Atlanta shooting. Our hearts are with her family, friends, and colleagues as they remember her and grieve this tragic loss."
The four women wounded were between the ages of 25 and 71, and identified in court papers as Lisa Glynn, Georgette Whitlow, Jazzmin Daniel and Alesha Hollinger.
Glynn and Daniel were shot in the abdomen, Whitlow in the arm and Hollinger in the face, according to the arrest affidavit. The shooting unfolded at 1110 W. Peachtree St. between 11:59 a.m. and 12:08 p.m., according to the court papers.
Three of the wounded remained in the intensive care unit of Grady Memorial Hospital and two of them will return to the operating room on Thursday, said Robert Jansen, the facility's chief medical officer.
"This is unfortunately a fairly routine thing after these types of injuries," Jansen told reporters. "You can't do everything during the first operation so going back is scheduled event."
Daniel, 25, had been working in the patient intake in the Northside Hospital facility for six months, her father Quentin Daniel said.
Even though she's in critical condition and breathing through a tube, Daniel said doctors have told him they're confident she'll recover from gunshot wounds to her chest and pelvis.
"She's a jolly, cheerful person who loves her family," Daniel said Thursday of her daughter, who is a new mom. "Her 1-year-old didn't sleep well last night without his mother."
The gunfire in Atlanta was the latest in a string of mass shootings that have been plaguing America. Five people were killed in a Louisville bank on April 10 and six people died when gunfire erupted inside a Christian school in Nashville on March 27.
"We have had a mass shooting in this country virtually every day this year and I’m afraid we’re becoming numb to it," Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., said on MSNBC on Thursday. "I’m afraid that we are behaving as if this is normal. This is not normal, to live in a country where no one is safe, no matter where they are."
Warnock spoke from the Senate floor on Wednesday, saying his two children were caught up in the Atlanta school lockdowns that were ordered immediately after the shooting.
