A man was arrested last week on charges related to a January shooting at an apartment complex in southwest Atlanta that left a woman critically injured, authorities said.
Daniel Neal, 20, was taken into custody Tuesday on one count of aggravated assault after Atlanta police said they linked him to the shooting at the Retreat on Greenbriar.
The Jan. 2 incident injured 30-year-old Brittany McElrathbey, who was home with her 12-year-old son Tavion, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. McElrathbey’s brother, Ray, played football at Clemson University and was the subject of the Disney movie “Safety.”
Police did not say if the shooting was meant to target Brittany McElrathbey, but her family members said they do not believe the bullets were meant for her. Her mother called the shooting “random and unexpected,” and her brother told Channel 2 Action News the incident might be a case of mistaken identity.
Multiple shots were fired into McElrathbey’s apartment and she was hit once in the head, suffering critical injuries. As she sat on her sofa looking at her phone, the bullet entered the back of her head and exited near the bridge of her nose, her mother wrote on a GoFundMe page.
The gunshot fractured many of the bones on the right side of McElrathbey’s face, leaving her in a coma and on a ventilator in the days after the shooting, according to her mother. McElrathbey has since been released from the hospital and continues to recover.
The Retreat at Greenbriar, previously known as The Park at Greenbriar, is among 275 of the metro area’s persistently dangerous complexes, according to the AJC’s “Dangerous Dwellings” investigation that looked into serious crimes, lax maintenance and other hazards in Atlanta neighborhoods.
Neal was booked into the Fulton County jail after his arrest last week. Police did not say if they expected to make additional arrests in the case or if the shooting was gang-related. The incident remains under investigation.
— Staff writer Caroline Silva contributed to this article.
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