Gwinnett County authorities believe they may have thwarted a killing spree earlier this week after confronting an armed man in the parking lot of a business near Briscoe Field.
The brother of Mulugeta Ejigu called 911 early Wednesday to alert authorities that the 51-year-old man had told him he had just killed his wife, Gwinnett police spokesman Cpl. Jake Smith said Friday in a statement.
The caller also said he feared Ejigu would head to a business, Hewatt Enterprises on Briscoe Boulevard near the Lawrenceville airport, to confront people who sold him a struggling gas station.
According to a 911 recording obtained by Channel 2 Action News, the caller told the operator, "My brother, I think he got problem with wife, and he just called me and he told me he killed her."
The caller said Ejigu had guns and further warned, "He says he's on the way to kill somebody else."
The brother, who was not identified, said Ejigu was having “all kinds of problems with his wife [and] with his business,” a gas station in Snellville. The caller said Ejigu blamed Hewatt, a property management business that leases convenience stores and other retail space, for his troubles.
The caller told the 911 operator that his brother was “going to the office [to] the people who sold the business to us. He's only going to kill him,” the caller said, not identifying any specific person.
“So, is there a way you can track him down before he goes there, please?" the caller asked the 911 operator.
Smith, the police spokesman, said a Gwinnett officer near Briscoe Field arrived at Hewatt shortly after 8:30 a.m. and spotted Ejigu in the parking lot. The officer gave verbal commands to Ejigu, but less than a minute later, the suspect shot himself in the face, police said.
Around the same time, officers arrived at Ejigu’s home in the 600 block of Sunnyside Drive in unincorporated Lawrenceville and found his wife, Abeba Belete, 46, on the floor with a serious head injury.
"He was at the location that the caller said he was going to hurt people, so we're very fortunate that we had an officer in the area," Smith told Newstalk WSB.
Both Ejigu and his wife survived their injuries and were hospitalized in serious condition. Police said Ejigu will be charged with aggravated assault when released from the hospital.
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