Victims ID’d; manhunt continues
♦ Shooting investigators are looking for Daylon Delon Gamble.
Gunshots rang out and disturbed the peace of a cold January night at two homes in the Williamson Street area of Rockmart.
When police arrived at two scenes just a few blocks apart on Thursday night just after 8 p.m., they found five people who were shot in what is believed to be a targeted killing of two men and two women.
Four victims were pronounced dead on the scene after the coroner’s office arrived, and the fifth was rushed to Atlanta Medical Center by airlift not long after the incident for emergency surgery.
As of press time, 24-yearold Peerless Brown remained in extremely critical condition on Friday evening, with injuries to his head. Local officials following his progress report that he is in a medically-induced coma.
Polk County Coroner Tony Brazier said, after family members were fully notified of what happened, that Helen Rose Mitchell, 48, and Jaequnn Davis, 19, both of 503 Williamson St., were found in front of their home at one scene.
Brown was also found at the Williamson Street home by paramedics, who rushed to get him treatment Thursday night.
Just a few hundred yards away at 319 (Short) Rome St., Arkeyla Perry, 24, and Dadrian Cummings, 26, were found fatally shot as well. At least three calls came into 911 within minutes reporting the incidents.
The five victims were all believed to have been targeted based on the nature of their wounds, according to police.
Police were still searching at press time for 27-year-old Daylon Delon Gamble, considered armed and dangerous, after he allegedly fled the scene and stole a black Ford truck from the Williamson address. The truck was later recovered in Bartow County, according to the GBI.
Gamble is being sought by local, state and federal authorities, who were still on the hunt for him as of Friday evening.
Already the case has drawn in extensive local and area resources during the initial response and follow-up manhunt. Those have included 3 GBI regional offices, the Rockmart Police, Polk County Police, Cedartown Police, Haralson-Paulding Drug Task Force, the Cartersville Police, Floyd County Sheriff’s Office fugitive task force members and federal officers from both the FBI and U.S. Marshal’s Field Office.
Brazier said the four found outside their homes were all undergoing forensic exams by the GBI’s Crime Lab, and were officially pronounced dead on the scene at 8 p.m. Thursday night.
The shootings marked the first murders of 2019 in Polk County, and outpaced the past two years of violent deaths in one night. There was only one murder in all of 2018 in Cedartown, and three in 2017.
Brazier said in his experience in Polk County in recent years, the murders were the most that have ever taken place at one time.
The double shootings took place just a short drive from historic downtown Rock- mart. Less than a mile separates both addresses with South Marble Street.
Rockmart Police Chief Keith Sorrells said in his long career in law enforcement in the Rockmart community, he had not experienced anything like Thursday’s shooting before.
“It is difficult for this not to touch everybody in this community one way or the other. Whether you were relatives of those families, or friends of someone that knew them, it’s just a tragedy,” Sorrells said. “In my mind we’re a close knit community. My heart goes out to the families of the victims and those that are connected to them, which I think encompass everybody.”
“I think we all want what’s best for Rockmart, and this is not it. It’s not a true reflection of this community,” he said.
Sorrells said, based on calls received by Polk County 911, the first call was about the Williamson Street address at 7:59 p.m., and another shooting moments later not far from where the house sits at 422 Gordon St. The second call was then received moments later on a report of shots being fired at 503 Rome St.
He added that thus far, police have not yet determined a motive as to why Gamble would commit the crime, or anything about the victims that would explain why this happened.
Authorities on Friday all urged Gamble to turn himself in.