It’s somewhat common — though illegal — for guns to be fired to mark the start of a new year.
At least seven people have been shot, two of them fatally, by celebratory New Year’s gunfire in metro Atlanta since 2000.
— Two minutes before midnight on Dec. 31, 2011, Sergio Martinez and his relatives turned down the music and prepared to welcome the new year according to their custom, a family hug.
Out of nowhere, a bullet pierced the curtain in the living room of the home on Worcester Place near Lilburn. Seconds later, another projectile crashed through the ceiling of the kitchen, where Martinez and several children were watching a neighbor’s fireworks through a sliding-glass door.
The bullet struck Martinez, 34, in the head.
Two neighbors, Ervin Turner, 62, and Jesse Foster, 20, a stepfather and stepson who lived across the street, were charged with involuntary manslaughter.
— Marquel Peters, 4, was playing with a video game, waiting with his mother for a 12:30 a.m. 2010 New Year's concert to begin at Church of God of Prophecy near Decatur, when he was shot in the head by a stray bullet. Marquel was on the floor, crying and bleeding, when medics arrived, but he died later at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston.
The shooter could have been as much as 2 to 3 miles away, Kelly Fite, a former ballistics expert with the GBI, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time. But most likely, the shooter was about a half-mile away and the gun was tilted at about 30 or 40 degrees, not straight up, he said.
— In 2005, stray bullets hit two people at different locations in downtown Atlanta on New Year’s Eve. Aimee Buff from Hampton and her fiance were celebrating her 27th birthday at Underground Atlanta’s Peach Drop when she was wounded. A bullet hit Buff in the ear and became lodged about 2 inches from her spine.
— A few blocks away, Merritt Tidwell, a University of Georgia freshman from Douglasville, was struck below her right knee by a bullet that pierced the roof of the Georgia Dome, where she was watching the 005 Peach Bowl.
— In 2004, 86-year-old Dorothy Young of Atlanta was wounded in the arm as she was leaving a New Year’s Eve church service in Bankhead.
— A fan at the 2001 Peach Bowl was grazed by a stray bullet that came through the roof of the Georgia Dome.
— In 2000, Crystal Garrett, a college student from Easley, S.C., was hit by a stray bullet moments after she watched the Peach Drop at Underground Atlanta.
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