In a dramatic turn of events, the case against a Clark Atlanta University graduate student previously indicted on several charges in a 2023 road rage shooting has been dropped, court documents show.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office filed a motion Friday to drop the case against Ladavious Dashawn McNair, who was arrested Oct. 2. The motion said “the state no longer believes that it can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt due to the change in the victim’s certainty of his identification of the defendant as the shooter.”
Court documents show the case was dismissed with prejudice by Judge Kimberly M. Esmond Adams, ending a month-long legal ordeal. McNair, 32, had been indicted on two counts of aggravated assault and one count each of aggravated battery and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
“(McNair) is grateful. He has been released this afternoon at the Fulton County Rice Street jail. And he has just headed home to family, where he is going to decompress and have an opportunity to eat his favorite meal and have a shower,” his attorney, Marsha Mignott, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday afternoon.
Since the arrest, McNair’s attorney and family had been saying that the U.S. Army veteran was innocent. Mignott had said he was in class at the time of the shooting.
But police said surveillance cameras picked up McNair’s vehicle near the scene and that his cellphone was pinpointed to the location. That led to his arrest and Oct. 24 indictment.
The victim told the AJC on Friday that he notified the district attorney Oct. 5 after McNair’s first appearance hearing that he was unsure if McNair was the suspect. He later contacted Mignott’s office on Tuesday to tell them he didn’t think McNair did it, the attorney said.
The victim said he spoke to members of the DA’s office again Thursday and reiterated he wasn’t sure they had the right guy.
“I saw him in first appearance court on a Zoom call. That’s when I realized that I made a mistake,” the victim said. “And I notified (the DA’s office that day) that I was unsure.”
The situation had been tormenting the victim. He said he had been unable to sleep in days, troubled by the thought that an innocent man was facing serious allegations.
“We are sympathetic to the situation that this alleged victim has found himself in, where he was seriously injured. We’re just proud that he had the courage (to tell officials they got the wrong person),” Mignott said.
McNair had been accused of pistol-whipping the victim in the head and shooting him in the knee near the 600 block of Metropolitan Parkway on Nov. 1, 2023, leaving him with severe nerve damage, authorities said. No one was taken into custody at the time. McNair wasn’t arrested until almost a year later.
The case drew attention on social media after McNair’s lawyers and family said he was at the university — about a mile from the shooting scene — at the time. His supporters also questioned why it took authorities so long to identity him as a suspect and the process they used.
Mignott said she had an affidavit from McNair’s professor and 12 students who were willing to testify that he was in class that evening. She said there was no surveillance footage available of him going into the school that day because it records over itself after 30 days.
On the night of the incident, the victim said he was traveling south on Northside Drive when a driver allegedly sideswiped his vehicle as he tried to turn left, according to his arrest warrant. The victim continued south and eventually stopped at a red light at the intersection of Metropolitan Parkway and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.
While stopped, the victim said he and the suspect exchanged words. Then the suspect became “furious,” and fired a single shot into his knee that exited from his ankle, the warrant stated. At about 6:30 p.m., Atlanta police found the victim sitting in a white Chevrolet work van.
A witness to the shooting, a tow truck driver, said he had been traveling behind the van and saw the shooting while stopped at the intersection. He heard one shot, the warrant added, though no shell casings were found.
Police said the shooting could be seen on the tow truck’s surveillance system at 6:23 p.m., about three minutes after the alleged sideswipe, according to the warrant. Law enforcement also tried to get footage from the victim’s vehicle but had technical difficulties, the report added.
Authorities said they tied McNair to the scene after looking at surveillance cameras in the area and identifying a vehicle they believed belonged to him. On Nov. 22, 2023, a search warrant was obtained for McNair’s cellphone. According to the report, that analysis showed that “100% without a doubt that the person of interest/suspect was in the area at the time of the incident.”
But McNair’s attorney said he was driving in the area on his way to class and that “his vehicle got picked up because Metropolitan is right in that area where Clark Atlanta University is.”
Mignott had highlighted two major problems she said she had with the investigation: conflicting information about the suspect’s vehicle, and two photo lineups issued by police.
Police confirmed that McNair was the registered owner of a 2018 Infinity QX50. In the warrant, the witness originally only said the suspect was driving a silver sedan, possibly an Infinity or Genesis. Police also identified the vehicle as two different types of Infinity models in the warrant.
McNair’s attorney also questioned the validity of two victim lineups, administered 10 months apart. During the first, on Nov. 11, 2023, the victim did not pick McNair as the man who shot him. Instead, he identified another man. Police noted in the warrant that the man who was identified “unfortunately” looked similar to the suspect.
Then, about nine months later, the victim found the incident report, searched McNair’s name on Facebook and texted a photo of him to police Aug. 16, the affidavit stated. The victim told police he looked “out of curiosity” and was “shocked” to see that it was the man he believed shot him, the affidavit stated. During a subsequent photo lineup at his home, the victim identified McNair, prompting police to take out arrest warrants, the report stated.
McNair was taken into custody in Clayton County on Oct. 2, Mignott said. Two days later, he was transferred to the Fulton County Jail, according to online records. The first appearance hearing, where the victim began to question his positive identification, took place the next day.
Police said the victim underwent emergency surgery and suffered permanent nerve damage to his leg. An officer described the injury photos as “gruesome” in the warrant.
The AJC has reached out to Atlanta police for comment. Fulton District Attorney’s Office spokesman Jeff DiSantis told the AJC he would not be providing a statement.
— Staff writer Caroline Silva contributed to this article.
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