An Austell man has been convicted of shooting his former girlfriend and endangering their two children on Christmas Day, 2012.
A Cobb County jury on Thursday convicted Redrick Damian Bartie, 37, of aggravated assault, two counts of reckless conduct and firearms-related charges.
Kim Isaza, a spokeswoman for the Cobb district attorney’s office, said in an email that Bartie and the victim had been in a “volatile eight-year relationship,” and the victim moved to Florida with the children in the fall of 2012.
“Mr. Bartie, though, persuaded her to bring the children to visit him for the holiday, and they were at his apartment on Whisper Trail in Austell on Christmas Day, 2012,” she said. “Before dawn, while the children slept in another room, the defendant argued with the victim, then took out a .40-caliber pistol and put it against her chest.”
Isaza said Bartie fired once, but the gun jammed.
“After he cleared the pistol, he again put it to her chest and fired,” she said. “He then turned the weapon and shot himself while telling her, ‘Go to sleep with me.’ He then called 911 and told the dispatcher, ‘I shot her. Come get me.’”
The victim suffered a punctured lung, a lacerated spleen and multiple fractured ribs from the shooting, prosecutors said.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Reuben Green sentenced Bartie, who had been held without bond since his release from the hospital in January 2013, to the maximum possible, 27 years to serve in prison, Isaza said.
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