Autopsy: McDonough woman committed suicide in Delta Air Lines employee parking lot

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A 55-year-old woman who drove to a Delta Air Lines employee parking lot Monday armed and looking for someone who worked there shot herself in the chest with a .38-caliber handgun, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

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Bob Andres bandres@ajc.com Investigators at the scene of the shooting. The side windows of the car are shot out and there are at least two visible bullet holes in the sheet metal.

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Bob Andres bandres@ajc.com Airport workers gather along Loop Road near the airport. The access road in was blocked by police while they investigated the shooting. The GBI is investigating a fatal police shooting outside of a Delta Maintenance facility near Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. A Clayton County spokesperson said the victim, who was involved in a domestic dispute, was armed.

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GBI spokesman John Bankhead said Tuesday her body had a "contact range wound to the chest... It was a textbook, self-inflicted gun shot wound."

Caren Archer of McDonough was not shot by the Clayton County police dispatched to investigate a report of trouble, Bankhead said. The officer was firing a different caliber weapon.

The sedan, while parked in the employee lot and with Archer still in the driver's seat, had a bullet hole on the back door on the passenger side and both windows on that side had been shot.

The autopsy indicated she died immediately.

Bankhead said the number of shots the officer fired was part of the continuing investigation, but the officer apparently "thought he was being shot" when Archer shot herself.

"The autopsy performed today at the GBI Crime Lab on the woman involved in the incident yesterday on Delta Air Lines property determined that she died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest," the GBI said in a written statement. "The autopsy results are consistent with the evidence found in her vehicle."

Bankhead said the "evidence" was the weapon and other things also were collected from inside the car but that information was part of  the still-open investigation.

No other details have been provided about the shooting around 12:30  p.m. Monday in a lot where hundreds of cars belonging those working at the maintenance facility were parked.

Clayton County police, which was called to the scene, has only described it a "domestic situation" and that Archer came to the site beside Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport looking for a Delta employee.

"[She] was looking for a Delta employee who was not at work," Clayton County Police Lt. Tina Daniel said on Monday.

Police declined to say if she got inside the area using a security badge or if she forced her way in.