An 18-year-old gunman opened fire and shot five people at a home in northwest Atlanta on Sunday before killing himself, authorities said.
Atlanta police responded just after 10 a.m. to a residence in the 3500 block of Adkins Road in the Fairburn Heights neighborhood near the Fulton County Airport. When officers arrived, they found three adults and two children, ages three and 15, suffering from gunshot wounds, Atlanta police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton told reporters from the scene. The victims were taken to area hospitals and are said to be stable.
“There was some type of ongoing dispute domestic in nature inside the home that escalated to gunfire,” Hampton said. “The suspect shot all five victims then shot himself.”
Hampton said he knew the suspect’s relationship with the victims, but wasn’t sharing that information because their family wasn’t notified yet. He said two other children were also inside the home. They were uninjured and taken to a hospital.
The incident occurred amid a weekend that had already seen five people killed by gun violence.
Earlier on Sunday, a 25-year-old valet was fatally shot in Buckhead after he confronted someone who was breaking into a vehicle. Detectives said they were looking for a person of interest, who is believed to be armed and dangerous.
On Saturday, four people were fatally shot within a 12-hour span.
At about 1:05 a.m., Atlanta police found a 31-year-old man shot to death near the Thomasville Recreation Center in southeast Atlanta. The suspect, Leverett Hancock, 40, was booked into the Fulton County Jail on charges of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Just two hours later, officers were called to the troubled Fairburn Gordon apartments and found a man fatally shot. He was identified as 44-year-old Theon Elliot.
Later on Saturday, two separate shootings a few miles apart in northwest Atlanta left a man and a woman dead, authorities said. The man was found shot at Magnolia Park, which like Fairburn Gordon, was identified in the AJC’s “Dangerous Dwellings” investigation.
About four miles away, police responded around noon to a home in the 900 block of Margaret Place near Westside Park for a person shot call. At the scene, officers found a woman who did not appear to be breathing, police said. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The identity of the man and woman were not released.
Atlanta police Chief Darin Schierbaum said the Adkins Road shooting, and much of the violence this weekend, was domestic in nature.
“What we see here today has commonality of what we saw in the city this weekend,” Schierbaum said. “Intimate setting among friends and family where a gun is present and anger occurs.”
“This department will continue to hold drug dealers accountable, gang members accountable, individuals that are running guns in our city,” he added. “But we cannot be present in every living room and in every setting of a home where we need others to be able to intervene to stop violence from occurring.”
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