Atlanta lounge owner Vanessa Elaine Thrasher fought back against the men who were robbing her, firing her gun once before she was shot to death, an Atlanta police investigator testified in court Friday.
Blood from the man Thrasher hit helped lead police to the arrest of one suspect in the Aug. 16 killing at O.T.’s Lounge and Grill on the city’s northwest side, police said. A family member turned in another.
Two more suspects – Gerald Peterson, 23, and another man police investigators have tentatively identified as “C.J.” – remain at large, police said.
Investigators believe all four armed bandits were members of a gang called the “Campbellton Road Gangsters.” Though authorities previously said there was no connection, prosecutors wondered aloud Friday if Thrasher’s killing was somehow linked to another shooting death at her restaurant, in 2011. The 53-year-old woman was scheduled to testify as a key prosecution witness in that case within a week of her death.
Thrasher was fatally shot seven times during an armed robbery in the early hours of Aug. 16, authorities said.
During a probable cause hearing Friday for suspects Otis Ricks and DeMario Carman, Atlanta police homicide Detective Dwayne Sutton described video footage showing the two men shooting Thrasher.
“Mr. Carman’s arm comes up,” Sutton said from the witness stand. “She slumps over like something is hitting her, but Mr. Carman isn’t punching her.”
Sutton became flustered as he continued to detail what he saw in the video, and Thrasher’s three sisters – who were in court for the hearing with their brother and his daughter – quickly left with tears streaming from their eyes.
“She’s on the ground and one arm is up,” Sutton said, before pausing to compose himself. “That is when Mr. Ricks and Mr. Carman appear to be shooting her.”
But then Sutton said Thrasher got back to her feet.
“She pulls what appears to be a handgun from [behind] her back,” he said. “Her arm comes up at an angle and points toward Mr. Carman, and he falls out of the scene.”
Carman, he said, was hit in his left forearm.
Sutton said police found a handgun at the scene that appeared to have been fired once and matched the image of the weapon Thrasher had in the video.
Ricks was arrested later in the day after the video was circulated through the media.
“Mr. Ricks’ mother called 911” after recognizing her son in the footage, Sutton said. “She begged him to turn himself in while she was on the phone with [emergency operators.] She didn’t want him to be hurt by police.”
She also gave the license plate number of the car Ricks left her home in with his girlfriend. Police found Ricks holed up in a Jonesboro hotel room, and he eventually described for investigators a robbery plan that “went wrong.”
Meanwhile, blood samples from the crime scene and from the parking lot where the four men fled matched with DNA previously collected on Carman, a two-time felon who was on probation, police said.
Carman narrowly escaped capture hours after the shooting, Sutton said.
Someone took Carman to Southern Regional Hospital in Riverdale to be treated for the gunshot wound to his arm, Sutton said. Medical staff are required to alert police of gunshot victims, and they called Clayton County Police.
“He said he had been shot on Old National Highway,” Sutton said. “So they called Fulton County police.”
As Carman was being treated and interviewed by police, Sutton said a nurse retrieved a wallet from him containing Thrasher’s ID.
Sutton said the Fulton officer who responded to the hospital challenged Carman’s story.
“She said she was at the intersection … where he claimed to be shot,” Sutton said.
Still, Carman was not immediately taken into custody, Carman’s attorney David Cooper noted on cross examination.
“How is it that he was able to walk out of the hospital without being arrested, if he had Ms. Thrasher’s ID on him?” Cooper asked.
Carman was captured by police in the early hours of Sept. 5.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Karen Woodson ruled Friday that there was probable cause for the cases of Ricks and Carman to go before a grand jury on Oct. 19 on charges of murder, felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Woodson also denied bond to both men. The pair remained in Fulton County Jail.
Thrasher was killed days before she was to testify in a 2011 murder trial in which security guard Jerome White died after trying to intervene in a fight and eventual shootout in the parking lot of her restaurant.
Despite police investigators’ belief that robbery was the motive in Thrasher’s shooting, Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Jack Bars voiced his suspicions Friday that the shooting was linked to the trial.
“The state is not satisfied that this case may not be related to that other case,” Bars said. “There was no reason for this woman to die.”
A $12,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the capture of the remaining two suspects. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers of Atlanta at 404-577-8477.
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