Police are looking for two suspects who shot a truck driver and stole his tractor-trailer loaded with furniture during a violent hijacking early Tuesday near a northwest Atlanta rail yard.
According to Atlanta police, the truck driver, 43-year-old Warren Hardie, told investigators he was stopped at a traffic light on Marietta Road near the Norfolk Southern rail yard at about 2:30 a.m. when two people armed with a handgun and a sledge hammer smashed the window of his 18-wheeler and tried to force him out of the cab.
“The victim fought the suspects until he heard a gun discharge and realized that he had been shot,” Atlanta police Sgt. Greg Lyon said. “The victim ran back to the rail yard and the suspects fled in his truck.”
Hardie suffered a graze wound to his head and was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in stable condition.
Police tracked the cab portion of the truck through GPS to DeKalb County, where it was found abandoned in the parking lot of an elementary school, but the truck’s trailer was not there.
The trailer was later found abandoned at a cemetery in south DeKalb County, police said.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said cemetery workers at Kennedy Memorial Gardens off River Road called 911 about 8 a.m. to report the abandoned trailer.
Parish said some, but not all, of the furniture was missing from the trailer.
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