Police apprehended a man with several weapons Wednesday afternoon at a Publix grocery in downtown Atlanta. No shots were fired (CNN):
A man armed with a rifle entered an Atlanta Publix Supermarket Wednesday in Midtown at Atlantic Station, a commercial and residential area in the city, police said.
A witness saw the man entering “the location openly carrying a rifle and entered the bathroom” and alerted the store management and then notified police, according to a preliminary investigation.
Officers immediately located and detained the man. During the investigation, officers recovered five firearms (two long guns and three pistols) and body armor, according to the Atlanta Police Department.
(That’s three pistols plus one revolver by my count in the photo above. Multiple reports say five.)
The witness told ABC in Atlanta:
“I saw an AR-15 and I was like … you know, this kind of startled me, again with the events that just recently happened in the grocery store up in Colorado,” Russell said. “I went to the clerk at the customer service desk working at the time and let them know. It wasn’t acted upon right away. It was actually taken a little more lightly than I thought it would be, especially with the recent events.”
Atlanta police have identified Rico Marley, 22, and charged him with reckless conduct. Emergency services gave Marley a mental health evaluation before police transported him to jail. Police have provided no information about Marley’s intentions.
A later report (WSB-TV) indicates Marley has been charged with “6 counts of Possession of Firearm or Knife During a Commission of or Attempt to Commit Certain Felonies and 5 counts of Criminal Attempt to Commit a Felony.”
WSB also learned that Marley had a prior arrest for simple assault dismissed on a technicality three years ago and was in possession of a “weapons carry license” when arrested.
Atlanta Station shut down later in the day while police investigated a suspcious package. It contained “clothing and other miscellaneous items,” police said.
Atlanta is still reeling after a spree shooter killed eight people (six of them women of Asian descent) at three massage parlors on March 16. Then a mass shooter at a Boulder, Colo. grocery store murdered 10 people on Monday. (I guess it’s only a mass shooting if it occurs all in one place.) Now it seems police may have prevented a copycat grocery store mass shooting.
There are several thousands of dollars worth of firearms shown in the police photo at the top. Seems a lot for a 22-year-old.
The relief from having had my vaccinations has worn off.