Editor’s note: This story was updated July 2024.
Friends and family members are mourning the life of an Atlanta woman who was killed Tuesday morning when police say a domestic dispute erupted into gunfire at a southeast Atlanta apartment complex.
The triple shooting happened shortly before 9:15 a.m. in the 400 block of Thomasville Boulevard, according to police. Officers arrived on scene and discovered a woman dead inside an apartment, Atlanta police Maj. D’Andrea Price told reporters outside the home.
“There was a domestic dispute between a mother and father,” Price said.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Gunshots rang out as the woman left the apartment, authorities said. She was shot multiple times and died at the scene.
Two men were also shot, according to police. The first was found with wounds at the initial scene and taken to the hospital. He is listed as stable. A third victim was discovered in the area about three hours later with a gunshot wound to the foot.
Atlanta police said they were searching for a woman suspected in the shooting. Later Tuesday evening, authorities announced the arrest of 43-year-old Andrea Rivers on multiple charges related to the incident.
In July 2024, Rivers was found guilty of felony murder, four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage to property in the first degree and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Rivers was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus 35 years to run concurrent with the life sentence.
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Few other details about the circumstances leading up to the shooting have been released, including what caused the fight that preceded the gunfire.
More than a dozen neighbors and family members gathered at the complex Tuesday morning as detectives began their homicide investigation. Distraught relatives cried out as they held one another and attempted to make sense of the deadly shooting.
“My sister is a good person. She works hard. She takes care of her children,” Lashunda Hicks told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She is a single mother. And then we gotta go tell her children that they’re not gonna ever see their mama no more.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Police identified the victim as Chiemere Poole. Hicks said she was a mother of five whose children ranged in age from 5 to 16.
“They just don’t understand what this did to our family,” she sobbed. “You took somebody away from us that we can never be able to replace ... It wasn’t even worth it.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Rivers was taken into custody without incident and transported to the Fulton County Jail, police said.
Authorities have also not released the names of the two men injured in the shooting, which comes amid a spike in violent crime that has left many Atlanta residents on edge. The city surpassed its 100th homicide of the year over the weekend, ahead of last year’s pace. The Atlanta Police Department investigated 157 homicides in 2020, up from 99 in 2019.
On Monday, department leaders held a news conference outside police headquarters urging residents to stop shooting one another. Within hours, another man was dead after a fight led to gunfire outside a gas station in northeast Atlanta, authorities said.
The department took to social media again in the hours after Poole’s death, pleading with residents to settle their disputes peacefully. Like many of the other murders detectives have investigated this year, Atlanta police said this, too, could have been avoided.
By the time 911 is called and police arrive, it’s often too late, the department wrote on Facebook: “The damage has already been done.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
“Another life lost, another funeral will need to be planned, more families impacted by irresponsible, immature and reckless people with guns ...” the post read. “We continue to be disturbed and saddened by the number of people willing to take a life, throw their own lives away, and destroy families by picking up a gun and pulling the trigger.”
Atlanta police once again urged residents to “make better decisions” and walk away from disputes.
“When people begin to value their life and the lives of others, these homicides statistics will go down,” the department wrote.
CORRECTION: An initial version of this story incorrectly identified the victim of the fatal shooting. Police identified the woman killed Tuesday morning as Chiemere Poole.
