In a bizarre turn of events, what was originally reported as a home invasion morphed into what police are now calling a gang-related attack with a suspect in custody for murder.
Police got a call about 2:30 a.m. from Shaquita Green who initially told them someone tried to break into her Marietta home and that she shot them.
But Marietta police Officer Chuch McPhilamy said that wasn’t the case and instead investigators discovered the incident was gang related.
Witnesses told police Green let Javarian Mitchell inside her home and that he let in Keandre Funches, who was looking for a resident who was not home. McPhilamy said Mitchell and Green knew each other, but did not know the extent of their relationship.
“At some point, Funches threatened the residents with his own hand gun,” McPhilamy said. Green’s three children were inside the home at the time. Funches, police said, had had several run-ins with Marietta police, including a 2015 incident where he pointed a gun at an officer.
While protecting her children, Green managed to grab her own gun and fatally shoot Funches, McPhilamy said, adding Green was afraid he would hurt her or kill her and her children.
“It was either him or me and I wasn’t going, my kids weren’t going to get hurt and they weren’t going to see me get hurt,” Green told Channel 2 Action News.
Green, who has not been charged in connection with the deadly shooting, was not injured. Detectives interviewed her for hours at the Marietta Police Department, McPhilamy said.
Authorities did not release the identity of the resident Funches and Mitchell were looking for, but Green told Channel 2 it was her husband.
Mitchell wasn’t the trigger man in the shooting, but Marietta police said his involvement was a direct result of it.
Mitchell was “committing a felony when someone was killed,” Marietta police Officer Chuch McPhilamy told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. According to Georgia law, a person can be charged with murder, if they committed a felony that led to another person’s death.
Mitchell was taken into custody late in the afternoon. In addition to murder, he faces aggravated assault with a firearm, false imprisonment, and third degree cruelty to children.
McPhilamy said police “don’t normally respond to calls in this area.”
A golf course and a new subdivision are within walking distance of the shooting scene.
“It’s a quiet area,” he said.
Jasmine Garry, who has lived across the street from the scene of the shooting for about 20 years, was interviewed by police and described Green as nonviolent.
“There was nothing that would make you think (you) got to keep your eye out for her,” she said.
Garry said the community is close-knit.
“We’re all family here because pretty much everyone on this street has lived here their entire lives,” she said.
The shooting made Garry question who’s coming into the community and consider the possibility of getting a gun.
“It’s really shocking,” she said.
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