Marcus Peden isn’t sure why he grabbed the can of mace before making the short walk to East Atlanta Village with his roommate and a friend visiting from out of town.
“I barely ever used it,” said the 26-year-old in his first interview since the fatal shooting of his roommate and close friend Patrick Cotrona over Memorial Day weekend — one of several recent crimes in the area believed to be connected.
They had completed the same walk along May Avenue too many nights to remember, and Cotrona would often make it alone. Crime wasn’t something they worried about, Peden said.
As they neared the Midway Pub on Flat Shoals Avenue, they noticed a car pull up alongside them and park. A young man, possibly in his teens, jumped out of the charcoal sedan and sneaked up from behind, plunking Peden on the back of the head with a hard object.
“Gimme your money!” demanded the suspect, gun in hand. “He kept repeating it, real fast,” Peden said.
Cotrona obliged, reaching into his front pocket to retrieve his wallet.
“I don’t know if the guy thought he was going for a gun or something, but that’s when he shot him,” Peden said.
Cotrona, hit in the abdomen, slumped to the ground, screaming in pain.
The assailant seemed unfazed, said Peden, now standing in the gun’s cross hairs. Pretending that he was getting his wallet, Peden went for the mace.
“He started screaming then jumped in the car and took off,” he said, but not before firing an errant shot that grazed Peden’s leg. Police believe the suspect had an accomplice who drove the dark gray Dodge that links Cotrona’s shooting to a pair of armed robberies in Reynoldstown earlier that night and possibly other recent crimes — including the shooting of a Grant Park man last month as he walked home from a Braves game.
“I couldn’t see his face,” said Peden, who saw little more than a silhouette on the darkened street.
Meanwhile, Cotrona’s screams had quieted.
“He was struggling to speak,” Peden said. “I was panicking. I didn’t know what to do.”
Before EMTs arrived, Cotrona’s eyes became glassy and his breathing labored.
“I was hoping he was just in shock,” Peden said.
Ambulances whisked the two friends off to different hospitals. Peden was sent to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was treated and released early the next morning.
He then headed to Atlanta Medical Center, not knowing if his roommate was alive or dead. Once there, he received the news he feared.
“I have a lot of anger,” Peden said. “It’s just such a stupid situation. He was killed for nothing.”
Cotrona’s death still doesn’t seem real to his family, privately struggling with what has become a public loss. The emotions come without warning.
“Yesterday my mother was washing his shirts and I picked one up and realized this is the closest I’ll ever come to hugging him again,” sister Kate Cotrona Krumm told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said. “It’s still hard to accept he’s gone.”
They’ve been helped by the outpouring of support from Cotrona’s friends and neighbors.
“Without it, I don’t know how we’d get by,” Krumm said.
Among those sending messages of encouragement was Don Henderson, whose son John was shot and killed while working at a Grant Park bar in January 2009 — a crime that galvanized intown residents in much the same way as Cotrona’s death has.
“He has offered support and advice to our family during a time when we have needed it most,” Krumm said. “Very few people can understand the trauma that we’ve experienced, and it’s a blessing to receive the friendship of a family that shares in the same kind of tragic loss.”
So far, investigators have shared few details regarding their investigation into Cotrona’s shooting. Krumm said she is optimistic those responsible will be apprehended.
“My closure can’t be dependent on a capture,” she said. “That’s a separate battle. My own personal closure is remembering how I related with my brother, focusing on all the positive memories we shared.”
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