New eyewitness accounts of Wednesday’s shooting at a Midtown Atlanta medical building are providing a fresh illustration of the terror that gripped the city in the incident’s aftermath.
On Friday, Atlanta police released the 911 audio from one of the initial calls reporting the shooting, while a 102-year-old woman who was visiting her doctor recounted her firsthand experience in an interview with Channel 2 Action News.
Clara Bridges, the centenarian who witnessed the shooting in the Laureate Medical Group office, told Channel 2 she feared for her life when she heard gunshots.
“I said, ‘In the name of God, I can’t die. I cannot leave my children,’” Bridges said.
She first heard the gunshots, then saw bodies falling to the floor.
“I was just getting myself in a seat to be comfortable, and then ‘Pow! Pow! Pow!’” she said.
A 911 call released by police shares Bridges’ fearful tone. The woman calling, who was not publicly identified, explains that they heard gunshots from their office in the Northside Medical Midtown building on West Peachtree Street.
“Do y’all see anybody hurt?” the dispatch operator asks the caller.
After speaking to a doctor in her office, the woman says in a trembling voice that the doctor saw someone lying on the floor near the elevator. The dispatch operator asks for a description of the victim’s condition, but the doctor was unable to see as he sought cover from the suspected shooter.
Bridges’ niece, Carmen Point-Kelly, said her aunt could have been in the line of fire under different circumstances. The chair in the waiting room where Bridges usually sits during her appointments was already occupied, so Point-Kelly helped her to another chair before going to the bathroom.
“And the same chair that I usually put her in, that lady was laying on the ground,” Point-Kelly told Channel 2. “She got shot in her arm.”
Five women were shot, including four who were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. Officials have not released their names, but arrest warrants identified them as Lisa Glynn, Georgette Whitlow, Jazzmin Daniel and Alesha Hollinger. According to police, Whitlow was shot in the arm, Glynn was shot in the abdomen, Daniel was hit multiple times in the abdomen area and Hollinger was shot in the face. Two remained in the intensive care unit Friday, one was being moved out of the ICU, and the fourth was being released.
A fifth victim, 38-year-old Amy St. Pierre, died at the scene.
Point-Kelly also called 911 from the bathroom, though police did not share the audio of her call. At the time, she was terrified Bridges was one of the victims, she told Channel 2, but responding officers were able to reunite the two.
“We just hugged each other, and all I could see was all the bodies on the ground,” Point-Kelly said.
The suspected shooter, Deion Patterson, 24, remained at large for hours Wednesday before he was found and taken into custody in Cobb County. His mother said he suffered a mental break and was seeking medication for anxiety.
Bridges told the news station that she’s had other brushes with death during her long life, including being hit by a bus. She was able to emerge from the chaos of Wednesday’s shooting again unscathed.
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