The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Councilwoman increases reward to $5K to help catch college gunman
Atlanta police last week released a video showing a suspect in a shooting at a block party at the Atlanta University Center that wounded four students.
No one has stepped forward to identify that man, so on Sunday, Atlanta City Council Member Cleta Winslow said she is adding $3,000 more in reward money to better incentivize someone’s good citizenship. The reward is now $5,000.
“This is personal,” Winslow said after a short press conference near the AUC campus. “Parents send their children to our town. They need assurance that they are safe.”
Four women — two students from Spelman College, two from Clark Atlanta University — were shot or grazed Tuesday night outside the Robert W. Woodruff Library during a party before the first day of school. Police believe the young man in the video was involved in a confrontation in which four or five shots were fired in the plaza crowded with 200 students. Police said that perhaps a second possible gunman was targeted by the suspect but that the women were not intended targets.
One of the victims was shot in the chest, but all are expected to recover.
Police said they are getting some tips but have not gotten enough information to make an arrest.
Longtime civic activist Michael Langford said, “I want to appeal to the community at large because no crime occurs without someone knowing, hearing or seeing something.
“And while the money is there, I want to appeal to your moral conscience to come forward because the only thing it takes for evil to exist in our community is for good people to sit back and do nothing.”
Winslow said she had just met with student leaders to assure them of their safety. Both Atlanta and Atlanta University Center police said they have beefed up patrols in the areas that area.