Recordings from 911 calls reporting the triple shooting in Midtown on July 15 paint a picture of the panic the lunchtime gunfire incited.
“I’m in the Midtown Proscenium Building and I see people panicking on the street,” said one caller who dialed for help from the ninth floor of the building where the three victims and the alleged shooter worked.
“We heard what sounded like gunshots, and we heard someone screaming, ‘Call 911.’ ”
Atlanta police released audio Monday from the half-dozen 911 calls reporting the apparently random shooting that claimed the life of one woman, left one paralyzed and injured a third.
Police say security guard Nkosi Thandiwe walked up to the third floor of the parking deck at the corner of Crescent Avenue and 14th Street shortly before noon that day and fired one shot at Brittney Watts, 26, killing her.
Thandiwe, 22, allegedly took Watts’ car and tried to leave the parking deck, encountering more victims, as one 911 caller described from the ground where she saw her coworkers Lauren Garcia and Tiffany Ferenczy get shot.
“He was in the car. … He exited a parking garage and he shot from the car,” the woman told the emergency operator. “I guess he stole the car. I don’t know. It was a black male. He was in a black Prius.”
The caller, whose name was obscured during the call, told the operator that she worked with both Garcia and Ferenczy, and described what happened to the two as she learned it.
“My friend has been shot … in the back,” the woman said as she started the call. “Ma’am, another one of my colleagues has been shot, too. There were two people. I didn’t realize this until now.”
In the background, others can be heard shouting, “Help us! Please help us!”
Subsequent callers reported hearing gunshots and provided operators with the location of the shooting. But it’s unclear from the recordings whether anyone witnessed the initial shooting that killed Watts.
The initial caller, however, was with Ferenczy and Garcia as they walked along Crescent Avenue, which witnesses said was filled with downtown lunch-goers. And after fighting through apparent tears to describe her friends’ injuries and give a location to send aid, she passed on more about which direction the shooter went.
"He kind of blasted through the things that go down … where you pay, and he exited left onto Crescent and left onto 14th," the caller said. "He just came out of the parking lot in the car. We were all looking at him because we noticed that he went through without paying. And that's when he fired out of the driver's side window."
Thandiwe would later turn himself in to police. He is being held without bond in the Fulton County jail.
Ferenczy, who was shot in the calf, returned to work last week, and Garcia was moved from Grady Memorial Hospital to the Shepherd Center for spinal treatment.
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