A downtown Atlanta hotel has been given the all-clear after an hours-long lockdown as officers searched the building for an armed man but found no one, police said
Authorities believed the man who fled from the scene of a fight was barricaded in a room with children inside the Country Inn and Suites hotel, according to police. However, after police searched the hotel and kept it surrounded for about three hours, the suspect was not found.
Investigators determined that the armed man left the hotel soon after he entered it, police spokeswoman Officer TaSheena Brown said. The initial reports of children being in the same room as the suspect were incorrect, Brown added.
Officers responded to the report of a fight between two men in the 700 block of Pollard Boulevard around 12:45 p.m., Atlanta police said. Officers from the APD and the Georgia State University Police Department coordinated their response after GSU officers saw that the man appeared to be armed.
Police said the man was arguing with a landscape crew and fired multiple shots at them before fleeing to the hotel, Channel 2 Action News reported. Officers and a SWAT unit set up a perimeter around the hotel while the building was searched room by room, according to Channel 2.
One of the rooms did have children inside, but the armed man did not come into contact with them, according to police.
A man who was staying at the hotel with his family told Channel 2 that he came out of his room and was told by police to lie on the ground. He said police asked him about a gun, but he didn’t know what they were talking about.
Traffic was stopped along Pollard Boulevard during the investigation, but the road has been reopened. No injuries have been reported and the investigation is ongoing, police said.
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