A dozen people are shot during violent weekend in Atlanta

At least a dozen people were shot during a violent weekend in Atlanta, authorities said.

The spate of shootings in just over 12 hours left one man dead, The Atlanta Journal-constitution reported.

The violence began Saturday evening, when a man with a knife at a gas station was shot and wounded by an off-duty Georgia State Patrol trooper, police said.

In a separate shooting about three hours later, a man’s body was found near Memorial Drive and Moreland Avenue. Police believe he was shot during an argument over a car.

The weekend shootings come as police and city leaders try to curb violence after last year’s rise in deadly crime. Atlanta police investigated 157 homicides in 2020, the Journal-constitution reported. That’s up from 99 in 2019 and the most in more than two decades.