Police officers ducked behind cars as gunshots whizzed through a busy
part of downtown Atlanta until authorities say police killed the man
who was firing at them.
The shoot-out took place on Monday night
near the Aloft Atlanta Downtown hotel - a few blocks from many of the
city's larger, high-rise convention hotels and offices that help fuel
the city's billion-dollar hospitality and tourism industry.
"Gunshots
were coming from every angle," witness Bryceton O'Neal told The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. "Cops were running behind cars, taking cover."
An
Atlanta officer was patrolling downtown when a Jeep was spotted driving
the wrong way, police Major Adam Lee III told local news outlets. When
the officer attempted to stop the Jeep, the vehicle sped up, struck a
shuttle bus and then hit a pole, Lee said.
The dead man, whose body was found behind a trash bin, was identified by the medical examiner as Darius Smith, 18, of Greer, South Carolina.
"We see this car blow right through the intersection and it smacked this [hotel shuttle] bus," witness John Paul Wegener told The Journal-Constitution. "There were police cars everywhere.
"We started to hear gunshots - pow, pow, pow - it was pretty scary," Wegener added.
Officers found a duffel bag full of marijuana in the Jeep, police said. They also found two guns in the vehicle, and one with Smith, they said.
The name of the driver wasn't immediately released.
No comments:
Write comments