A Fulton County judge has ordered the involuntary administration of antipsychotic medicine to a woman who was found not competent to stand trial on charges related to two fatal shootings in Atlanta in August 2022.
Raissa Kengne has been in the custody of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville since November 2023, but she’s been uncooperative with doctors about her treatment, court filings say.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram said in an order in October that medical staff “may involuntarily medicate the Defendant to restore her to competency to stand trial in accordance with the treatment plan outlined” by her doctors.
Kengne is appealing the order on her own, although she is represented by a lawyer who did not draft the filing. Kengne’s attorney of record, Dwight Thomas, said there is no legitimate basis to appeal the involuntary medication order to return her to competency, so he is not appealing the order on her behalf. Although Kengne has refused to assist Thomas in her defense, even asking Ingram and the Georgia Court of Appeals to remove him as her attorney claiming fraudulent representation, Thomas confirmed he still represents her.
Kengne originally was found not competent to stand trial in June; she faced charges of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, attempted burglary and false imprisonment.
Kengne has been in jail since she was arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Aug. 22, 2022, hours after prosecutors say she shot and killed Michael Shinners and Wesley Freeman, injured another man and held a fourth victim at gunpoint.
Shinners was the property manager of the apartment building in which Kengne lived, and Freeman had been her direct supervisor at a previous job.
Doctors determined that Kengne was not competent to stand trial and was classified as “psychotic with symptoms consistent with schizophrenia,” saying she would need antipsychotic medication before she could be tried.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Court documents say Kengne has been uncooperative with any type of mental health assessments or treatments, has been argumentative with other inmates and has denied having any mental health issues.
“She remains easily agitated, continues to refuse to be seen by her assigned psychiatrist, psychologist, or treatment providers, ignores the treatment team when attempts are made to communicate with her since she refuses to come to the treatment team meetings, and continues to state that she does not want to be seen by CSH doctors and that she is communicating with the judge to allow doctors outside of CSH to see her,” says the doctor’s assessment outlined in the October order.
To regain competency to stand trial, doctors prescribed Kengne a course of daily antipsychotic medication at the lowest effective dose, but she has refused to take the medication, insisting that she has no mental health issues, court documents say.
“(Her doctor) made clear that it is extremely unlikely that Defendant Kengne will become competent to stand trial without taking anti-psychotic medication to treat her psychosis,” Ingram wrote in the order.
Credit: Family
Credit: Family
Shinners was found dead and another man found injured around 1:45 p.m. on Aug. 22 at the first shooting scene, the 1280 West condominium building on West Peachtree Street. Shinners, 60, was the property manager, and the man who was shot and survived is the building’s chief engineer. The two were found in the management office.
Beacon Management Services, the company that manages 1280 West, described Kengne as a “disgruntled resident of the building.” The Atlanta Police Department has said the victims were “likely targeted.”
Thirty minutes after the men were found at the first shooting scene, Freeman, 41, was injured in the second shooting at an office tower at 1100 Peachtree Street. He later died at Grady Memorial Hospital. Freeman was Kengne’s direct supervisor at BDO USA, a public accounting firm, from 2018-21. She sued him and others after quitting.
Kengne later fled the scene in a taxi to a home in Ansley Park, where she walked around and tried to enter the home of a lawyer who represented her for a short time in 2021; no one answered the door. She then got back in the cab and headed to the airport, claiming she was picking up someone; she was arrested at the airport without incident.
Since she has been in custody, Kengne has filed multiple handwritten motions and appeals to Fulton County and the Georgia Court of Appeals.
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