Before the sun was up Thursday morning, homicide detectives were sent to two shooting scenes in Atlanta.
The first shooting was reported about 11 p.m. Wednesday. Mohammed Abdus-Salaam, 42, was unloading groceries from his car when he was shot multiple times in the 1000 block of Camilla Street in the southwest corner of the city, according to police.
Abdus-Salaam was pronounced dead at the scene. No information on a suspect was released Thursday, police spokesman Officer Steve Avery said in a statement.
Shortly after 5 a.m., another call came in regarding a body inside a vehicle in southeast Atlanta’s Lakewood Heights neighborhood.
The parked SUV was spotted on Compton Drive near the gated rear entrance to South Bend Park. Officers responded and found a man inside with a gunshot wound, Atlanta police Maj. Reginald Moorman said from the scene. He was later identified as Joshua Chafin, 39.
Initially, detectives were “entertaining all possibilities” in the shooting death, Moorman said. The case was later classified a homicide, bringing the number of homicides in Atlanta this year to 108.
Ninety-nine homicides were recorded in all of 2019.
Armed robbery was later determined to be the motive, and Cody Ray Simmons and Ted Griffin were identified as suspects. Griffin was arrested on charges of murder and armed robbery, but Simmons was never located.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
The scene is less than a mile from the Little Bear Food Mart on Jonesboro Road, where a man was shot and killed last week.
In a recent interview, interim police Chief Rodney Bryant was asked about the spike in shootings and homicides across the city this year. Bryant said the recent increase in violence is something police are seeing in major cities across the U.S., not just in Atlanta.
“I wouldn’t say that criminals are getting more brazen. I think what we’re recognizing through this COVID period is that there’s much more difficulty in people being able to have conflict resolution,” he said, adding that criminals have been violent for decades and “this isn’t a new phenomenon."
”I think that what we are seeing during this unique time in our lifetime with this COVID pandemic is people are just a little less able to resolve a level of conflict," Bryant said.
According to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, crime in the city is down about 20% overall, despite the uptick in homicides. The mayor said she is hopeful the city has turned a corner.
— Staff writers Shaddi Abusaid and Dan Klepal contributed to this article.
