Atlanta police have arrested a 16-year-old in connection with a fatal shooting Saturday night outside a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Vine City.
Investigators believe a single shot was fired “negligently” by the teenager from inside a vehicle and was not intended to be deadly, a police spokesperson said Monday evening in a news release. The victim was found wounded outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive location when officers responded about 7:15 p.m.
He was taken to the hospital in critical condition and later died, according to police. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as 21-year-old Kani Pierre-Lewis.
The next day, authorities said the teen went to police headquarters and spoke with the lead detective on the case. The 16-year-old said he was handling a gun inside a vehicle when he “negligently discharged a firearm, striking the victim,” police spokesperson Benjamin T. Hopson said in a statement.
At that point, the teen was taken into custody on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. His name is not being released because he is a minor.
Chick-fil-A’s website lists the location, which opened in 2018, as “temporarily closed due to unforeseen issues.” No one answered the phone at the restaurant Monday evening.
The weekend shooting was not the restaurant’s first incident of violence. In May 2018, just four months after its opening, employees were robbed at gunpoint.
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