Atlanta shooting suspect captured after hours-long manhunt

Authorities have succeeded in pinning down the suspected shooter who shot and killed a 38-year-old woman and wounded four others in a Midtown Atlanta medical building, CNN reported on Wednesday.

The suspected gunman, identified as Deion Patterson, 24, was taken into custody without incident after an undercover officer spotted him north of the city in suburban Cobb County several hours after the 12:30pm shooting at the Northside Medical facility, police said.

Patterson, 24, stormed into the medical facility around noon and shot the first victim within minutes, Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton said.

The suspect was armed with a handgun, police said adding, he ran out and later commandeered a car to make a getaway.

The fatal victim was identified as Amy St Pierre, the Fulton County medical examiner’s office said and added that she was an employee for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC said.

All the wounded included women between the ages of 25 to 71 and were rushed to a nearby Atlanta hospital. According to hospital sources, three of the injured were critical when they reached their emergency rooms.

The latest mass shooting has left Atlanta horrified as cops asked residents and patrons visiting the area to find safety as they combed the neighbourhood for the suspected shooter. “It was a “traumatic day,” for the city,” the city's mayor said.

“This was a horrible act of gun violence, but equally horrifying is that we know that this is not unique in our country,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Wednesday night. 

“We need more actions (for) the rights of our citizens to go about their lives, to be able to go to a doctor’s office, to a supermarket, to a gas station or to their school without the threat of being gunned down.”

The motive for the shooting, and whether the suspect knew or targeted any of his victims, had yet to be determined, police said.

"We know that he had an appointment at the facility, but why he did what he did, all of that is under investigation," Atlanta's deputy police chief of criminal investigations, Charles Hampton, said at a news briefing after the arrest.

Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told an earlier press conference that it was too early in the investigation to determine if the five women who were shot were patients or employees.

At one point during the hunt, police searched a building under construction that the suspect had entered near Battery Atlanta, a commercial complex being developed adjacent to Truist Park stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer told reporters. But that search came up empty-handed, he said.

The suspect's apparent proximity to the Battery "was a concern to us because many people would be at that location," the chief said.

Police analyzed a barrage of surveillance camera images and telephone tips from the public on sightings to ultimately narrow down the suspect's location, VanHoozer said.

The gunman arrived at the medical center with his mother, Schierbaum said, but she was not injured. Police said she and other family members were cooperating with investigators.

Little was immediately known about the suspect's background.

The U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson joined the force in July 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January, after having last served as an electrician's mate second class. No reason for his discharge was given.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens decried the shooting as the latest act of carnage in what has become "a national epidemic of gun violence" turning schools, workplaces, churches and doctors' offices into potential killing zones.

He said active-shooter drills have become so common that a business in the area of Cobb County where Patterson was arrested happened to be conducting such an exercise as police closed in on the suspect nearby.