Video of fatal shooting prompts Atlanta Fire Rescue probe

The Atlanta Fire Rescue Department has begun an internal investigation based on video images of rescuers looking at a fatally shot man and then walking away without checking to see if the 21-year-old was still alive or already dead, according to a statement.

The department said in an e-mail distributed Friday evening it would have no comment until officials had reviewed the surveillance video of the Dec. 4 armed robbery and shooting at Moreland Package Store and interviewed the rescuers who were called to the scene.

CBS Atlanta News posted the video on its Web site. The video show two paramedics and a fire fighter looking over a store counter, supposedly to the spot where Martez McKibben had fallen.

None of them touched McKibben.

And they walked away after a few moments.

“The Atlanta Fire Rescue Department has launched an internal investigation into the incident,” the written statement said. “Until we’ve had the opportunity to thoroughly review the video and take statements from all members responding to this incident, it would be premature to make any speculation on what did or did not take place. As, such this investigation is ongoing and until completed, the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department will not have any additional comments.”

Police said two men came into the Moreland Package Store, on the street that separates Fulton and DeKalb counties, just before 10 p.m. a week ago. Police said Terrone Anthony, 19, pulled a gun, demanded money and then shot McKibben in the stomach and buttocks.

Store owner Shaun Yu came from the back of the store with a weapon and shot Anthony in the arm and leg, police said.

Police said McKibben died on the store’s floor.

Anthony was arrested a block from the store. The second suspect, 19-year-old Aaron Jackson, was arrested Friday.

Anthony and Jackson have been denied bond. Anthony, who remains in Grady Memorial Hospital, is charged with murder, armed robbery and theft charges, and Jackson, in the Fulton County Jail, is accused of murder and armed robbery.

The shooting at the Reynoldstown liquor store was just a few miles from one earlier this year that galvanized neighborhoods east of downtown. Only one person, a suspected gang member, has been charged with killing John Henderson, a popular bartender at Standard Food & Spirits on Memorial Drive in Grant Park, on Jan 7, but police suspect others were involved.

Mayor-elect Kasim Reed came to a vigil for McKibben at the package store on Monday, and he vowed to follow through on his campaign promise to focus on crime in the city.

“I’m going to wake up every single day, making sure this stops right here and right now,” Reed said at the vigil.

Four days later, McKibben’s mother, Trina, said rescuers might have saved her son.

“A paramedic is supposed to come in and see if it's anything they can do to help a person, and clearly the video shows they did not do that. They never laid a hand on my child and I'm very angry," Trina McKibben told CBS Atlanta News. "He tried to save a life, and nobody tried to save his -- and that is very disheartening.”

The store owner, Shun Yu, told the television station the three rescuers “just looked at him. Didn't even reach down and feel for a pulse. When police asked us to leave the building he was still breathing."