Man arrested 5 months after shooting 2 on MARTA train, police say
MARTA police and the FBI arrested a man Friday they suspect shot two people aboard a train five months ago before fleeing into the East Point station.
Rico Williams was taken into custody in southwest Atlanta during a joint operation conducted by the transit agency’s police officers and the FBI Atlanta Metro Major Offender Task Force.
Just before 4 p.m. on May 18, two men were struck by gunfire inside a Gold Line train heading south toward the East Point station. One was shot in the chest and another was grazed by a stray bullet, but both survived, officials said.
Both victims had their daughters with them on the train when the shooting broke out. Williams is also facing cruelty to children charges.
One victim told police he heard an argument between the alleged shooter and the other victim, who accused the suspect of going through his personal bag, according to the arrest warrants obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The suspect then “yelled ’21, 21′ and then fired two to three shots,” the warrants state.
When the train pulled up to the platform, he fled. MARTA police had been searching for him since.
Detectives used CCTV footage inside the MARTA station to track the suspect’s movements at multiple stations and traced the Breeze card he used, according to the warrants.
Investigators then used his image to search for him in a law enforcement database and found a possible match: Williams. The search revealed he was on probation in Henry County and “had active warrants in Fulton County for probation violation and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon,” the warrant says.
Records show Williams has been in and out of state prison since 2005.
Police said he was arrested without incident and charged with two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of third-degree cruelty to children, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
In the aftermath of the shooting, MARTA police Chief Scott Kreher said in an AJC interview that the agency’s robust camera system and Real Time Crime Center help investigators track bad actors.
“MARTA is safe,” Kreher said at the time. “There are people out there that go toward gun violence versus mediating conflict, and we still, as a society, have to deal with that. That’s not a MARTA problem; that’s a nation problem.”
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