Deborah Hardy didn’t realize she had been shot.
Then, the 69-year-old said she saw blood coming from her sister’s leg. The two were in a downtown Atlanta food court Tuesday afternoon with their 3-year-old great niece when gunshots were fired. The three ran into a nearby restaurant and fell to the floor.
“We hollered, ‘Call 911! Call 911! We’ve both been shot,’” Hardy told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
Employees did just that.
“I’m in the Willy’s (Mexicana Grill) Peachtree Center,” an employee told the 911 operator. “We was working until we heard shots fired, and I have a woman here shot in her leg.”
Quickly, the caller updated dispatchers that another woman had also been injured.
“Oh, I have two people in here shot! I didn’t even know, ma’am. I’m sorry,” she could be heard telling the second victim. “They got help on the way, OK, baby? You OK? We got help on the way.”
The frenzied scene played out in the food court at Peachtree Center around 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, thrusting the city into temporary chaos.
A third person, a 47-year-old man, was also shot before an off-duty Atlanta police officer fired at the suspect, Jeremy Malone, injuring him and likely stopping the violence.
Hardy and her 70-year-old sister, Donna, were taken to Emory Midtown Hospital while the two men, whose injuries were more serious, were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.
“Adrenaline was flowing so heavy in me, I didn’t feel a thing,” Hardy said.
A man who told reporters at the scene that he witnessed that shooting later became a suspect in a subsequent shooting and hijacking of a transit bus two hours later — the second part of a wild afternoon in the metro area.
The sisters had taken their niece, Zaria, to Centennial Olympic Park earlier in the day so she could play in the fountains. After cooling off in the water, Zaria told her great aunts she knew what she wanted for lunch: pizza. So Hardy said they made the short trip to Peachtree Center.
They had just ordered Zaria a slice of pizza when they heard the gunshots.
“We had to hustle ourselves out of the line of fire, trying to get that baby out of the line of fire,” Hardy said.
Officers and paramedics quickly arrived at the restaurant and both women were loaded into an ambulance.
At the hospital, doctors said her wound was superficial and entered the fat in her calf, Hardy said. Her sister was shot in the ankle, but her wounds were also not serious. Both were able to go home the same day. Little Zaria wasn’t injured.
“I’m so thankful to my heavenly Father that nothing was worse,” Hardy said. “He was there. He was definitely with us. It would’ve been so much worse if he hadn’t been with us.”
With tweezers, doctors removed the bullet from Hardy’s leg.
“This is one time Aunt Debbie is happy to be fat,” Hardy said she later joked with a nephew.
But she knows how fortunate her family is to have survived the ordeal.
“We could’ve been killed,” she said. “They could’ve been planning our funerals right now.”
Investigators said the alleged shooter was stopped by an Atlanta officer who was working an extra job at the mall. Malone faces charges of aggravated assault, third-degree cruelty to children, reckless conduct and possession of a firearm by a felon and during the commission of a crime.
Hardy said she didn’t get a good look at the alleged gunman, beyond noticing his white shirt and dark pants. Her sister was able to tell investigators he had dreadlocks.
Recordings of the 911 calls depicted a frantic scene in the moments after the shooting.
“All we heard was gunshots fired, and we just ran,” a 911 caller said. “It was one, then we heard multiple — two, three, four, five, and then it stopped. We heard some more gunshots, but I’m not sure where he (the gunman) is now.”
Moments earlier, Malone had walked into the building and got into a fight with a man before shooting him, the GBI said. Malone then walked “further into the food court area of the mall and shot two other people,” authorities said.
According to an Atlanta police incident report, the off-duty officer heard the gunfire and ran toward it, confronting Malone.
“Mr. Malone did not comply with (the officer’s) verbal commands, and an exchange of gunfire took place,” the report states. No other details were released.
Before officers were finished clearing the scene, the man who said he witnessed the shooting allegedly went on to hijack a Gwinnett County transit bus full of passengers, killed one of them and then led police on a three-county pursuit, according to authorities.
Joseph Grier, 39, is accused of killing a passenger on the bus, 58-year-old Ernest Byrd Jr., police said. Grier was arrested and charged with murder, numerous counts of aggravated assault and kidnapping, in addition to hijacking a motor vehicle.
Both Malone and Grier were being held without bond Friday at the Fulton County jail. Both have extensive criminal records with felony convictions, records show.
Hardy said she doesn’t want to speak ill of the shooting suspect that injured her and her sister. But she said she hopes he gets the help he needs.
“It’s like the old wild, wild west,” she said. “You never know who’s carrying a gun.”
Walking away from a conflict is the better solution than pulling a gun, Hardy said. Despite her ordeal, she said she isn’t paranoid and may even return to Peachtree Center for lunch. She never got to eat the lasagna she ordered.
“Nowhere is safe. There is no safe zone,” Hardy said. “Bad things happen. We just have to deal with it.”
