← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Roger Bannister
Thread ID: 6746 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-05-17
2003-05-17 21:39 | User Profile
They get together to watch a basketball game, and then somebody said something wrong ... Well, DeKalb is a dozen murders ahead of where it was last year at this time.
[url=http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/0503/17dekshoot.html]http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dek...17dekshoot.html[/url] **'Why did he snap and kill innocent people?' **
Distraught survivors, kin puzzle over motive in DeKalb quadruple shooting
By DAVID SIMPSON The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Renee Hannans / AJC
A man who killed four people in a DeKalb County apartment was watching television with lifelong friends when he inexplicably opened fire, relatives of one of the slain victims said.
Two other people were wounded in the Thursday night shooting on Stockton Street, in the East Lake Terrace neighborhood just southeast of the Atlanta city limit.
Police obtained murder warrants Friday and were searching for James Fitzgerald Mitchell, 32. His address was unknown.
Police said those killed were three men, Marland Antonio Green, 28, and Marcus Wallace, 29, both of Decatur addresses; Eugene Clayton, 24, of East Point; and a woman, Zasia Holder, 21, of Decatur. Two other men, Marcus Green, 19, and Andrae Brittain, 26, both of Decatur, were wounded.
Relatives of brothers Marland and Marcus Green said James Mitchell was well known to most of the people who had gathered in the red-brick apartment building at 1904 Stockton St. to watch a late-night NBA playoff game.
"All of them grew up together," said Randy Mitchell, the Greens' stepfather, who lives in an apartment building separated by a driveway from the building where the shooting took place. (Randy Mitchell is not related to James Mitchell.)
The Greens' sister, Vernetta Green of Atlanta, said James Mitchell "wasn't a troublemaker. He was polite, cheerful."
But something "just snapped" shortly before midnight Thursday, she said. She got an account of the shooting from her younger brother, Marcus.
Marcus Green, who was too distraught to be interviewed Friday, told his sister there had been no sign of trouble as the group watched the Sacramento-Dallas playoff game. He was in the kitchen when he heard "poomph, poomph" sounds, Vernetta Green said. "He shot all the ones that were in the living room," she said. Marland Green was one of them. He was sitting on a sofa when he was shot in the chest. He staggered a few steps before collapsing in the front doorway, Vernetta Green said.
One man struggled with the shooter and, despite being shot, was able to wrest the gun from him, she said.
"He saved my brother's life. I would call him a hero," she said. She knew the man as "Dre." He apparently was the wounded man identified by police as Andrae Brittain.
Brittain was released from a hospital Friday. A relative who answered the phone at his home said he did not want to comment.
After the shooter fled, Randy Mitchell was awakened by Marcus Green at his window, saying, "Daddy, open the door. I've been shot."
Mitchell rushed outside to look for Marland Green, who was wheeled out on a stretcher soon after. He was pronounced dead about three hours later.
Marland Green left behind a girlfriend, Tiffany Hubbard, and their baby, Marland Jr., who is less than a week old. Hubbard, accompanied by her parents and the baby, visited the Greens' parents Friday morning. She left sobbing.
Marcus Green also was in tears as he walked Friday up and down Stockton Street. Vernetta Green said the family had been told to return him to the hospital to have a bullet removed from his elbow when he was calmer.
She said she always had been happy to see her brothers and their friends congregate next door. "They don't do any harm over there -- just chill, play cards, stay out of trouble."
She said James Mitchell, who knew the family when the Green brothers were growing up in the Shoal Creek neighborhood, had not been seen as much lately. She heard he was "doing good," which made it harder to understand how he could be accused of killing his friends.
"The only thing we want to know is why," she said. "Why did he snap and kill innocent people?"
The quadruple homicide is the second such crime in DeKalb County this year. In January, Ian Willabus killed his wife and three sons in their apartment near Stone Mountain before he committed suicide.
The latest killings raise DeKalb's murder total in 2003 to 37. That is a dozen more murders than were recorded in January through May of 2002.
--ÃÂ Staff writers Saeed Ahmed and Ben Smith contributed to this article.
2003-05-18 08:58 | User Profile
He was probably angry that those two teams have many outstanding white players.