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Police arrest suspect in fatal mass shooting at Atlanta medical center
Updated 18:30, 04-May-2023
CGTN
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens speaks at a press conference following a shooting at Northside Hospital medical facility in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., May 3, 2023. /CFP
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens speaks at a press conference following a shooting at Northside Hospital medical facility in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., May 3, 2023. /CFP

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens speaks at a press conference following a shooting at Northside Hospital medical facility in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., May 3, 2023. /CFP

Police have arrested a former U.S. Coast Guardsman suspected of killing one person and wounding four, all of them women, in a shooting on Wednesday at a medical building in Atlanta, then carjacking a vehicle to flee the scene, authorities said.

The suspected gunman, identified as Deion Patterson, 24, was taken into custody without incident after an undercover officer spotted him north of the city in suburban Cobb County several hours after the 12:30 p.m. shooting at the Northside Medical facility, police said.

The motive for the shooting, and whether the suspect knew or targeted any of his victims, had yet to be determined, police said.

The woman who died was 39. The four wounded women ranged in age from 25 to 71, media reported. Three of them were in critical condition, officials said.

The hospital said that the facility in Midtown Atlanta will be closed on Thursday and that all patient appointments stand canceled.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens decried the shooting as the latest act of carnage in what has become "a national epidemic of gun violence" turning schools, workplaces, churches and doctors' offices into potential killing zones.

He said active-shooter drills have become so common that a business in the area of Cobb County, where Patterson was arrested, happened to be conducting such an exercise as police closed in on the suspect nearby.

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

A total of 190 mass shootings have taken place in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.

More than 14,200 people have lost their lives due to gun violence across the country in the past several months, the website's data showed.

(With input from agencies)

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