A 19-year-old man was shot and killed in southwest Atlanta early Friday when he knocked on the door of the wrong apartment, police said.
The man, identified by the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office as Omarian Banks, was shot in the neck at the Retreat at Marketplace apartments in the 3300 block of Fairburn Road.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Atlanta police spokesman Officer Jarius Daugherty said Banks knocked on a door that he believed was his girlfriend’s apartment just before 12:30 a.m.
“Shortly after, the victim walked away from the door,” Daugherty said. “The resident of the apartment then went onto his balcony to confront the victim. A verbal exchange ensued between the two parties and, at some point, the resident produced a handgun and shot the victim.”
The alleged shooter, identified as 32-year-old Darryl Bynes, remained at the scene and was arrested. He was booked into the Fulton County Jail on a murder charge, police said.
Banks’ girlfriend, who asked not to be identified out of safety concerns, said the 19-year-old called her moments before he was killed and asked her to open the front door for him.
“He called me and he said open the door because he was getting a Lyft home, but when I opened the door I didn’t see him,” she said. “Then I hear one gunshot, and after that, I hear him yell, ‘I’m sorry, bro. I’m at the wrong house.’”
She said she then heard her neighbor tell her boyfriend, “Nah, (expletive), you’re not at the wrong house,” before firing two more times.
She ran downstairs to her boyfriend, who she said was lying in the grass.
“I turned him over and that’s when I seen the gunshot wound to his neck and blood all over him,” she said.
She said her boyfriend lived with her but may have been confused after getting dropped off in front of the wrong breezeway.
“He came to the wrong door,” she said. “It wasn’t self-defense.”
