A 24-year-old male suspect who killed one woman and wounded four others on Wednesday in an Atlanta hospital was arrested after an hourslong manhunt, the authorities confirmed.
The suspect Deion Patterson was arrested near Cobb County from a condominium complex.
According to the police, the suspect walked into the Northside Hospital waiting room around midday and started shooting. The CBS news reported that he was waiting for an appointment earlier in the morning and was agitated due to a delay. Following the shooting, the suspect stole a truck from a gas station from where he drove to Cobb County where he was finally arrested.
The police said they apprehended the suspect around 8 pm, roughly 8 hours after the shooting took place.
The slain woman was identified as Amy St. Pierre, who worked for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The 4 wounded women range from age 25 to 71.
“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 police were able to trace his location to Cobb County after a surveillance camera managed to pick up the stolen vehicle’s tag number which the suspect was driving.
“Technology played a huge role,” Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer said in a news conference. “But technology doesn’t do any good without people who are determined to capture an individual that would do something like this. And today we saw where those two things came together.”
