Man suspected in shooting at Atlanta medical building in custody after hourslong manhunt

ATLANTA — The suspect in a mass shooting in Atlanta that left one woman dead and four others wounded has been charged with one count of murder and four counts of aggravated assault, Fulton County Jail records show.

Deion Patterson was awaiting his first court appearance Thursday after police say he opened fire in the waiting room of an Atlanta medical practice Wednesday. Workers and others in a bustling commercial district took shelter for hours during the manhunt.

Authorities swarmed the city’s midtown neighborhood shortly after noon in search of the shooter. Patterson, 24, was captured in Cobb County, just northwest of Atlanta.

Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr. declined to discuss any details of the investigation or a possible motive, saying, “Why he did what he did, all of that is still under investigation.”

Patterson had an appointment at a Northside Medical building and opened fire shortly after arriving in an attack that lasted about two minutes, law enforcement officials said at a news conference Wednesday night. Patterson then went to a Shell gas station and took a pickup truck that had been left running and unattended, authorities said.

A 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said.

The Fulton County medical examiner’s office identified her as Amy St. Pierre. St. Pierre worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency confirmed.

The CDC “is deeply saddened by the unexpected loss of a colleague killed today in the Midtown Atlanta shooting,” spokesperson Benjamin Haynes said in a statement. “Our hearts are with her family, friends, and colleagues as they remember her and grieve this tragic loss.”

The four wounded women — aged 25, 39, 56 and 71 — remained in critical but stable condition Wednesday night, according to Hampton, the deputy chief. Their names were not immediately released.Patterson’s mother, Minyone Patterson, told The Associated Press by phone that her son, a former Coast Guardsman, had “some mental instability going on” from medication he received from the Veterans Affairs health system that he began taking on Friday. She said she didn’t know where her son was.

She said her son had wanted Ativan to deal with anxiety and depression but that the VA wouldn’t give it to him because they said it would be “too addicting.” She’s a nurse and said she told them he would only have taken the proper dosage “because he listened to me in every way.”

“Those families, those families,” she said, starting to sob. “They’re hurting because they wouldn’t give my son his damn Ativan. Those families lost their loved ones because he had a mental break because they wouldn’t listen to me.”

She ended the call without saying what medication her son had been taking.

After getting information that the shooter may have entered Cobb County, investigators checked surveillance and traffic cameras, and found that the vehicle that appeared to be the one he was driving had entered Cobb County around 12:30 p.m., Cobb County police Sgt. Wayne Delk said.

That discovery set off a massive search in the county just northwest of Atlanta.

Delk said Atlanta police recovered the vehicle in a parking garage near the Battery, a mixed-use development which is next to the stadium where the Atlanta Braves play.

In a statement, the U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson had joined the service in 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January. He was an electrician’s mate second class at the time.

Crime Stoppers was offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the suspect.

Around the time of the shooting, Cassidy Hale, a medical device representative, said she was driving to the facility to check on a machine in the building’s 12th floor outpatient surgery center.

Hale saw firetrucks but didn’t realize anything was wrong until after she parked and found the elevator wasn’t working. Hale said she called the operating room manager, who told her there was an active shooter and she should go back to her car.

Hale said police kept her from leaving the parking garage and later checked each car and escorted her out to be interviewed.

She then gathered with other employees and patients in a building across the street, where she said “everyone was really in shock” and “trying to process what was going on.”

The shooting comes as cities around the U.S. have been wracked by gun violence and mass shootings in 2023.

Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia took to the Senate floor to decry gun violence and to urge his colleagues to advance gun reform.

“There have been so many mass shootings ... that, tragically, we act as if this is routine,” the Democrat said during a 12-minute speech. “We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal.”

The Atlanta pastor added: “I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it’s only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door.”

Georgia’s other U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, also a Democrat, echoed his colleague in a statement issued Wednesday evening: “The level of gun violence in America today is unconscionable and unacceptable, and policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to ensure public safety and implement long-overdue reforms.”

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Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.