The Grady Memorial Hospital employee charged with stealing the wedding and engagement rings from a woman who died at the hospital last month helped police recover the rings from a northeast Atlanta pawn shop Friday, police said.

The attorney for Tacuma Jawara, a social services representative for Grady, told Atlanta police Thursday evening that Armstrong's rings had been pawned at Pawn Mart on Cheshire Bridge Road.

But the pawn shop had already closed, so Detective P.J. Roberson retrieved the rings from the pawn shop Friday morning, he said.

Shortly after noon, he made a trip to the home of the woman's family to give the rings to her husband, Alan Armstrong.

"It was emotional," Armstrong said. "These are pretty special rings. It felt great to see them."

The wedding and engagement rings, valued at $5,000, had been pawned for $650 by Jawara's nephew on May 1, Roberson said.

They turned up missing after Katherine Armstrong, a 35-year-old mother of two, was flown to Grady with fatal injuries from an April 30 wreck on Interstate 85 near Flat Shoals Road.

Jawara's job at Grady was to take patients' personal property, log it into inventory and have it put in a safe, Roberson said.

He was assigned to care for Armstrong's property, and a video surveillance camera showed him carrying a plastic bag believed to hold Armstrong's rings, Roberson said.

Jawara turned himself in to authorities on Wednesday, a day after police got a warrant for his arrest on a charge of theft by taking.

At the pawn shop, the rings were still in a back room because there's a 30-day waiting period before pawn items can be displayed and sold, Roberson said.

Good thing, too, Roberson said: Two men robbed the pawn shop Thursday night, but did not go into the back room.

Roberson said Jawara was with his nephew when he pawned the rings. The suspect also had pawned a man's wedding band on April 22. "Which, by the way, didn't fit his finger," Roberson said.

When asked whether the ring belonged to another patient at Grady, Roberson said they were looking into that.

Armstrong, meanwhile, said he put his wife's rings around his neck, on a set of dog tags from his days as a Navy pilot.

"It's not the best place for long-term security," Armstrong said, "but I wanted to have them close."