Patrick Cotrona, his sister said, never met an enemy until Saturday night.
The 33-year-old video game engineer died after being shot once in the abdomen while walking from his home in East Atlanta to a local pub. Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said Tuesday that investigators believe the shooting, which occurred at the intersection of Flat Shoals and May avenues, is linked to a number of recent armed robberies in the area and another shooting in Grant Park that cost the victim an eye.
“We believe there’s enough physical evidence that connects a number of these crimes together to the same group of individuals,” Turner said. “We’ve got someone who’s extremely dangerous (acting) without any justification.”
Robbery does not appear to be the motive in Cotrona’s shooting, which has mobilized the community.
“They didn’t even take the wallet,” Cotrona’s sister, Kate Krumm, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Their intention was to kill him, not rob him.”
Cotrona’s roommate, Marcus Peden, was shot in the leg after he pepper-sprayed the two assailants, who were apparently waiting in a darkened area one block away from the East Atlanta Village. A third man escaped uninjured.
Turner said some type of gang involvement is suspected.
“Whether they have a name, I don’t know about anything about that,” the chief said Tuesday. “We know people are doing some consistent things, and that’s what we’re concerned about.”
Police are focusing on at least four other incidents — each involving two male suspects — dating back to May 17, when Grant Park resident Saman Balkhanian, 22, was shot in the head and robbed while walking home from a Braves game. The shooting caused him to lose use of an eye. Police released a surveillance video on Tuesday night that they believe shows the suspects following Balkhanian and then leaving the scene after the shooting.
Three armed robberies followed, two on the 19th and one on the 20th, featuring “a similar m.o.,” according to Turner.
Police canvassed the area Tuesday afternoon and the chief said more officers will be dispatched to East Atlanta Village, where residents say such a show of force is long overdue.
“People are on edge,” said Kevin Spigener, president of the East Atlanta Community Association. He noted the shooting occurred at a time of night, a little before 11 p.m., when many people are walking to and from the village’s many nightspots. “This could’ve happened to any of us.”
District 5 City Councilwoman Natalyn Mosby Archibong, who represents East Atlanta , met with Turner on Tuesday afternoon and said she came away satisfied with the plans to catch the suspects.
“We’ve had an added police presence, but we obviously need more,” she said. “We’re going to have a real comprehensive understanding about the additional needs we have, such as increased lighting on the streets around East Atlanta Village.”
Residents say they’re demanding no less, organizing a vigil and rally to be held Friday evening at the intersection where Cotrona died.
“The community is so upset about this,” Spigener said. “And we’re not going to put up with it.”
Cotrona, a Georgia Tech graduate who grew up in Peachtree City, loved living in East Atlanta, his sister said.
“He was a non-confrontational person who didn’t look for trouble and, I assume, didn’t think trouble would look for him,” Krumm said. “And he died for nothing.”
—Staff photographer Ben Gray contributed to this report.
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