Deion Patterson (Photo courtesy of Atlanta Police Department)
ATLANTA – A gunman accused of killing one woman and wounding four others in a mass shooting in Midtown Atlanta early Wednesday afternoon was arrested in Cobb County Wednesday night, the Marietta Daily Journal reported.
Deion Patterson, 24, was captured by officers with the Cobb County Police Department without incident at a condominium complex near Truist Park. A vehicle Patterson allegedly carjacked near the scene of the shootings was recovered earlier inside a parking garage at The Battery Atlanta adjacent to the stadium.
Patterson, who served five years in the U.S. Coast Guard before being discharged in January, is charged with pulling out a handgun and opening fire inside an 11th-floor waiting room at a Northside Hospital facility on West Peachtree Street. He had gone to the medical center for an appointment.
Patterson fled immediately after the shootings and carjacked a vehicle near the intersection of 14th and Williams streets, Atlanta police said. Atlanta police and other law enforcement agencies from the region, unaware that Patterson had left the Midtown area, cordoned off several blocks and enforced a shelter-in-place order for several hours that kept workers at office buildings in the area, guests and employees of nearby hotels and restaurants, and school students from leaving.
The woman who was killed was identified as 39-year-old Amy St. Pierre of Atlanta, an employee of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The other four women was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. Three underwent surgery and were listed in critical condition, Atlanta’s WANF-TV reported.
Patterson’s mother accompanied him to the appointment Wednesday and was not injured. She then cooperated with police to try to locate her son.
Patterson lived in Jonesboro until recently, according to police. He has an arrest record going back to 2015, when he was charged with possession of marijuana in Henry County.
He was arrested in Clayton in 2017 and charged with driving under the influence, leaving the scene of an accident, and improper lane change. Those charges were dropped later in the year.
ATLANTA – A newly elected state representative from Barrow County is stepping down before the General Assembly convenes its 2023 legislative session next week.
Republican Rep.-elect Danny Rampey, 67, was arrested and charged with stealing prescription drugs from an assisted living complex he manages in Winder, the Athens Banner-Herald reported last month.
Rampey chose to resign the seat he just won rather than face being suspended from the General Assembly after lawmakers are sworn in next Monday.
Gov. Brian Kemp has scheduled a special election for Jan. 31 to fill the House District 119 seat, which includes a major portion of Barrow County.
“His withdrawal will ensure his constituents have a voice in this session of the General Assembly after the special election is held,” House Speaker Jan Jones, R-Milton, and Speaker-Nominee Jon Burns, R-Newington, wrote in a joint statement.
Rampey was elected without opposition in November, receiving 18,484 votes.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA –The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia filed an amicus brief on Monday with the state Supreme Court arguing a state law that led to a legislator’s arrest back in 2018 is unconstitutional.
The state law under which police made these arrests bans any speech that “may reasonably be expected to prevent or disrupt a session or meeting of the Senate or House of Representatives” as well as any “loud” or “abusive language” in the Capitol building.
Williams, a Democrat who now represents Atlanta’s 5th Congressional District, filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing the statute violates both the U.S. and Georgia constitutions. However, the federal district court sent the case to the Georgia Supreme Court requesting that it to rule first whether the statute violates the state constitution.
The ACLU’s amicus brief was filed on behalf on several organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the state NAACP and Planned Parenthood Southeast.
“Georgians must be able to speak their minds in the state Capitol building, the seat of our democracy,” said Sean Young, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia. “Our amicus brief asks the Georgia Supreme Court to enforce the robust speech protections of the state constitution and strike down this overbroad criminal statute.”
Young said while the statute criminalizes the disruption of legislative meetings in the Capitol, it also unconstitutionally criminalizes expressions of speech in the building even when they do not disrupt anything.
“The highest courts of 10 other states that have similar provisions in their state constitutions have agreed that this language provides greater protections than the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections,” Young said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Monday overhauling Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law to greatly limit who can detain criminal suspects beyond on-duty police officers.
Enactment of the bill sponsored by former state Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, marks the most high-profile bill on criminal justice to clear the 2021 legislative session following last summer’s nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
It came in response to the killing last year of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man gunned down while jogging near Brunswick during an altercation with three white men who said they believed he had burglarized a home under construction. Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan claimed they were making a citizen’s arrest and pleaded not guilty.
At a bill-signing ceremony attended by members of Arbery’s family, Kemp said the broad overhaul of Georgia’s outdated citizen’s arrest law takes the state another step toward righting wounds of injustice even though “the stroke of a pen cannot bring back what you have lost.”
“Today we are replacing a Civil War-era law ripe for abuse with language that balances the sacred right to self-defense of a person and property with our shared responsibility to root out injustice and set our state on a better path forward,” Kemp said.
Under the bill, owners of Georgia businesses including retail stores and restaurants can still detain shoplifters and other thieves on their premises, as long as they hand those persons over to police officers “within a reasonable time.”
The overhauled law will also allow police officers who are off duty or outside their jurisdiction to make arrests if they witness a crime or have knowledge a crime was recently committed.
Additionally, it will not affect existing self-defense and stand-your-ground laws in Georgia that allow people to defend themselves, their property and others from threats of violence or deadly force.
Reeves’ bill passed in the General Assembly with near-unanimous support from both chambers, marking the 2021 session’s most resounding bipartisan success as Republican and Democratic lawmakers split over other contentious legislation on elections and police budgets.
The bill also followed Kemp’s signing last June of landmark hate-crimes legislation that aims to protect people in the Peach State from acts of violence or property damage perpetrated because of the victim’s race, sex or gender.
Jury selection in the state trial of the two McMichael men and Bryan is set to begin in October. They face federal hate-crimes and kidnapping charges along with state charges including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony.
Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, speaks about his bill largely repealing citizen’s arrests in Georgia just before its final passage in the state House of Representatives on March 31, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Legislation repealing Georgia’s 150-year-old citizen’s arrest law gained final passage in the General Assembly Wednesday.
On the final day of this year’s legislative session, the state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill supported by Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative leaders as a follow-up to the hate-crimes law the General Assembly enacted last year.
The measure stems from the shooting death last year of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger who was cornered near Brunswick by two white men in pickup trucks and shot dead. The defendants have cited the citizen’s arrest law in their defense.
Under the bill, owners of retail shops and restaurants would still be permitted to detain shoplifters on their premises.
It would also allow police officers who are off-duty or outside their jurisdiction to make arrests if they witness a crime or have knowledge a crime was recently committed.
Repealing citizen’s arrest would not affect the state’s stand-your-ground law, Georgia Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, told his House colleagues Wednesday.
“Everything we can do as a culture, society and General Assembly to educate our citizens on what is self-defense and what is not will make our communities safer,” he said.
Carl Gilliard, D-Garden City, who worked with Reeves on the bill, said citizen’s arrest in Georgia dates back to the Civil War. Georgia now has a chance to overcome that history, he said.
“Georgia would be the first state in the nation to repeal this law,” Gilliard said.
The legislation now goes to Kemp for his signature.
