A man on an electric scooter was injured when gunfire erupted in northeast Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood on Thursday afternoon.
After realizing he had been shot in the thigh, the man rode on to Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center, where police found him around 4:30 p.m. He said he was taking a Bird scooter home from work when he heard gunshots near the intersection of Parkway and Felton drives, according to a police report released Friday.
The area is near Central Park and a few blocks west of the Beltline’s Eastside Trail.
According to the report, the shooting was captured on a neighbor’s doorbell camera, which appeared to show a gunman wait for the victim to pass before firing seven shots. Police said the footage shows the man standing in front of an apartment in the 500 block of Parkway Drive at 3:50 p.m.
The shots are fired “without notice or instigation” as the victim passes fifteen minutes later, an officer said in the report. The suspect could then be seen retreating into the apartment building before coming out again and climbing into a white Chevy Impala with no tag, the officer said.
When police went to investigate, they said they spotted what appeared to be blood stains on the sidewalk near the apartments. Seven shell casings were also found on the sidewalk in front of the building’s staircase, according to the report.
The man told police that he did not recognize the suspect.
The number of e-scooters on roads declined nationally after the COVID-19 shutdown last year, but they’ve slowly begun to return to large markets like Atlanta. On Thursday, California transportation company Lime announced that it will bring 1,500 e-scooters and 500 e-bikes to Atlanta this summer after leaving the market in early 2020.
The company said it has received a permit to operate and will be relaunching in the city, which had previously struggled to regulate the technology and safety concerns arose after some riders were killed. Last week, an 18-year-old and a 9-year-old were seriously injured after being hit by a utility truck while riding an e-scooter in southwest Atlanta’s Pittsburgh neighborhood.
Thursday’s shooting is the third to occur on an Atlanta road in as many days. On Wednesday, two other roadway shootings injured three people on opposite sides of the city.
Two men were shot about 2 p.m. while driving on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard in northwest Atlanta after hearing gunfire. It was not clear if the shots came from another vehicle.
Later that day, around 8:45 p.m., a woman riding in a friend’s car on I-20 was struck when a sedan pulled out in front of them and fired once near Boulevard in east Atlanta. The sedan quickly sped away following the shooting.
The circumstances surrounding all three shootings are still under investigation and police have not identified any suspects.
— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.
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