A man who police allege was firing two rifles in the air near the Tricor warehouse off Battlecreek Road in Jonesboro Friday morning is in custody.
According to a press release from CCPD, the call went out from the 1500 block of Arbor Place Drive in Morrow, “in reference to a armed subject shooting in the air with a rifle. After officer arrived on scene getting ready to approach the location, they observed the suspect shooting the rifle in the air.” Clayton County Police Officers were able to set-up a perimeter.
Clayton County Police Officers did an outstanding job responding swiftly and efficiently in order to protect the citizens of Clayton County.
The Clayton Crescent saw numerous Clayton County Police and Clayton County Sheriff’s vehicles surrounding the warehouse and in the parking lot, as well as blocking off the intersection of Battlecreek Road and Southlake Parkway.
CCPD set up a perimeter and issued an emergency shelter in place order for people in the area near Battlecreek Road, Southlake Parkway, and Arbor Place. Shortly afterwards, more than a dozen CCSO, CCPD, and Jonesboro Police cars flew towards downtown Jonesboro on Southlake Parkway.
Some people who live in the neighborhood were stuck waiting in the Dollar General parking lot, wanting to know when they could go home.
One woman questioned whether the shelter-in-place order had gone out to nearby schools. She said she needed to get home because she had a newborn baby,
A man who asked not to be identified by name told The Clayton Crescent that, earlier this morning, he had seen a man in a hoodie talking to himself and acting in an agitated manner.
“There was an aggravated gentleman at the top of the hill, yelling and screaming. I didn’t know what he was doing up there,” he said. “I thought he had an earpiece in, talking on the phone, so I paid him no attention, just jumped in my car and left. Then I went to the barbershop, and when I came back from the barbershop, I rolled by the street. I was fixing to go to the carwash and they were closed, everything was clear. And about the time that I made it from this street to the barbershop, close to the police station, I had a phone call that said the street was blocked off.”
The man said he thought the person he saw might or might not have been the shooter.
“He was very aggravated this morning,” he recalled. “I don’t know who he was talking to, what he was talking about, but he was very aggravated. He was more or less just talking, walking back and forth. He had a hood on….When I pulled out, when I got out of the car, I turned around and looked, like, ‘Who is he talking to?’ I just kept looking at him and he was just going back and forth, talking….He looked like he was aggravated, but I didn’t see any weapons in his hands or anything like that. And then again, he might not be the person. But he was the only guy I seen on the street when I left home this morning.”
CCPD said in the press release that, “After tracking the suspect, Clayton County Police Officers were able to successfully take him into custody. The suspect refuse[d] to provide his name at this time.”
CCPD released a photo of the man in custody, who was wearing a hoodie. (It is the editorial policy of The Clayton Crescent not to publish photos of pretrial detainees or “shaming” photos of suspects in patrol cars.) CCPD also published a photo of what it says were two rifles the suspect allegedly had been firing into the air.
