McCray’s Tavern at the corner of 13th and West Peachtree Streets opened Thursday morning at 11 a.m., as usual. Staff set chairs outside, prepped the bar and joked among themselves as they waited for their regular lunch crowd, mostly medical workers and businessmen in the area.
Outside the door, a normal day was unfolding in Midtown. Residents meandered about their day while the familiar sounds of construction echoed between high rise buildings.
The quiet Thursday was a stark — if welcomed — contrast from the scene that played out in the streets the day before.
Not 12 hours earlier, McCray’s manager Matt Riggs said the restaurant was deep in a Wednesday rush hour, serving upwards of 50 guests, when he saw police vehicles swarm the street in response to the mass shooting at a nearby office building.
Riggs said that officers directed everyone to shelter-in-place to stay safe from an active shooter in the area. That’s when the SWAT teams arrived and reality began sinking in.
“A lot of people were hiding in the bathrooms, just in case something spilled out into the streets,” Riggs said.
Across the street at the Northside Medical building, where doctors and nurses usually save lives, one was taken and four others put in danger after a shooter opened fire without warning.
The alleged shooter, 24-year-old Deion Duwane Patterson, led law enforcement on an hours-long manhunt through Atlanta and into Cobb County, where he was eventually taken into custody. Patterson faces a murder charge and four counts of aggravated assault.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Midtown residents like those in McCray’s were stuck inside for hours as police conducted their investigation. They were later joined by shaken nurses who were evacuated from the Northside Medical building and whose cars were still blocked in by the barricade of police.
Almost all of the restaurant’s staff who took shelter during the incident were opening up again Thursday morning.
“Being from here this isn’t necessarily my first situation like this, so I am kind of numb to stuff like that,” Riggs said. “So it’s just another day.”
Sadly, Cole Wadsworth said he felt the same.
Wadsworth, a server at Pasta de Pulcinella next to the medical building, said the restaurant’s Midtown location just opened two weeks ago.
While there was an initial sense of dread as staff locked doors and patrons took shelter, there wasn’t an air of surprise.
“If I’m being honest, it feels like this is just what happens in a city,” Wadsworth said.
Credit: John Spink
Credit: John Spink
Very few people came in and out of the Northside Medical building on Thursday morning — although security said it was open for medical workers who needed to retrieve their personal belongings. Only three television crews had set up camp across the street.
Atlanta City Councilman Amir Farokhi, who represents the area, stopped by around noon.
Farokhi said he didn’t know he shared a personal connection to the incident when he first heard about it Wednesday. It wasn’t until the location was released that he realized it was his own doctor’s office that was attacked.
“Yesterday was a really hard day for our city and it hit a little extra close to home for me because it was my doctor’s office and my wife’s doctor’s office,” he said. “I’ve sat in that waiting room many times and it could have easily been myself or my friends, who also go there.”
Farokhi said that he has heard in residents’ reactions the unfortunate normalization of gun violence, which he noted won’t change until lawmakers at the state and federal level take action to crack down on firearms.
“I think people are shaken a little bit and then I think there’s also a sense of resignation,” he said. “This is what it means to live in America today: we’re always at risk no matter where we are.”
As he prepped for his shift Thursday morning, Wadsworth described feeling “trapped” in the country’s seemingly endless string of horrific shootings.
“It doesn’t feel like there’s anything we can do about something like this — I can’t help that thing from happening again,” he gestured at the medical building next door. “It’s required of the people above us to take care of that, and it doesn’t feel like it’s happening.”
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