A man illegally riding a scooter on an Atlanta sidewalk led police on a brief chase last week and allegedly pulled a stolen gun from his waistband as he fled, police said.
Only later did officers discover the rider, identified by Atlanta police as Michael Cortex Kirkland, had a felony conviction on his extensive criminal record that prevented him from having a gun.
An officer first noticed the man riding a motorized scooter on the sidewalk Aug. 2 and attempted a traffic stop. It’s illegal to operate an electric scooter on a crosswalk or sidewalk in Georgia. Police said Kirkland threw down the scooter and began to flee, initiating a brief foot chase.
While running toward a nearby parking garage, Kirkland removed a gun from his waistband and tossed it, police said. That prompted the officer to pull out his own gun, as shown in body camera footage released by the police department Friday.
The officer, with his weapon drawn, continued to demand that Kirkland stop running. Just inside the parking garage, Kirkland fell and was quickly taken into custody, the footage shows.
“You ran with a gun,” the officer told Kirkland while searching him.
Kirkland told the officer that he didn’t have a gun, but the officer said he recorded the entire chase on his body camera. Officers located the suspect’s gun and confirmed it to be reported stolen by the Greenville Police Department.
“You tossed the gun; I almost shot you,” the officer told Kirkland in the video.
Kirkland, who has a 16-arrest cycle and is a convicted felon, is now charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, theft by receiving a stolen gun, willful obstruction of a law enforcement officer, possession of marijuana less than an ounce, and operating an electric scooter on a sidewalk, jail records show.
In 2017, Fulton County court records show that Kirkland was found guilty of simple assault. In 2019, Kirkland became a convicted felon after he was found to be in possession of a controlled substance and marijuana.
In December 2021, Cobb County court records show that Kirkland was accused of possessing a gun as a convicted felon in August 2020. A court date, for which he failed to appear, was scheduled for March 2022, according to online records. His failure to appear in court prompted a bench warrant out of Cobb County and a subsequent arrest by Atlanta police.
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