Police are searching for a suspect they believe is one of four people who fired gunshots at each other at a J.R. Crickets restaurant Feb. 24 along the route of a Georgia State University bus driver.
No one was seriously injured, and police have already arrested three suspects in the incident that left the restaurant littered with bullets after a bar fight, police said.
They are still piecing together what happened, using surveillance video released Wednesday from inside J.R. Crickets.
The video shows the armed man police are looking for as well as a victim lying on the floor of the restaurant near him.
Atlanta police Lt. Carven Tyus said during a press conference Wednesday the man had visited the restaurant before and was sitting at the bar when the shooting began.
“Looking at the video, he had been there quite some time,” Tyus said. “When the shooting started, he produced a handgun, and he started shooting outside the establishment. And he also shot an individual in the back inside the establishment.”
He then holstered his weapon and left the business, Tyus said.
Three weapons — at least one of which was a gun — were found near the crime scene the day after the shooting.
Atlanta police Sgt. Warren Pickard said officers didn’t find the weapons initially but later learned the crime scene was larger than they first suspected.
“Initially a gun was obstructed from view by a vehicle being parked over the gun. Once the vehicle left the scene, the gun was discovered,” Pickard said. “It was a dark-colored gun. The crime scene was initially processed at night, so those type of things do happen.”
Tyus said, in response to questions about the oversight during the press conference, that investigators did a great job processing the scene.
“They recovered about 30 shell casings out there. They recovered a lot of evidence,” Tyus said. “But unfortunately due to lighting, they missed that weapon.”
Police have discussed bringing additional lights to crime scenes, but the focus now is on finding the fourth person believed to be involved in the shooting.
“We have two in custody, and there’s one that the fugitives units are actively looking for,” Tyus said. “However, there’s one individual that was discharging a weapon that we don’t have any information on.”
Magrell Thurman, one of the suspects already in custody on unrelated charges, told police in a incident report that he fired a gun two or three times but only because someone was shooting at him.
Andre Dalyrimple, who initially gave the false name Brent Morrie, was arrested in the days following the shooting, after a Georgia State University bus driver helped police identify another shooter.
The bus driver, who witnessed the incident, said the suspect shot a man several times, according to the report.
Dalyrimple was charged with aggravated assault in the shooting.
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