DeKalb County

Dating app meetup leads to teen being robbed and shot, police say

By Lauren Pozen, WSB-TV
By Lauren Pozen, WSB-TV

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A teen is recovering at Grady Memorial Hospital after he was shot when he went to meet a date he met off a popular dating app.

Dontay Copeland had to have surgery on his leg after he was shot and he has a long road of recovery ahead of him.

"Whatever he did, it didn't cause for him to almost lose his life," Copeland's grandmother, Linda Okoro, told Channel 2's Lauren Pozen.

Okoro said she was at church when she got word her 19-year-old grandson was shot and robbed Sunday afternoon.

“It is still going through my mind, this is the most aggravating part of learning something like this,” Okaro said.

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DeKalb County police said Copeland met a woman on a popular dating app and then rode with the woman from Cobb County to Wollowick Drive in Lithonia.

Copeland and the woman walked into a nearby wood line together and that's when investigators say two men were waiting and took Copeland’s two cellphones, wallet and then handed a gun to the woman who shot Copeland in the leg.

“For somebody out there to just shoot him, take his stuff, knock him upside the head -- but to put a gun, that is violating anybody’s life,” Okaro said.

As the suspects left, police say Copeland made his way to a nearby home to call 911.

“Whoever did this, I am hoping that you feeling what I am feeling today, this boy is loved. Six aunts, multiple cousins, we ain't trying to relate. We don’t want to lose nobody. We just want you to know that he got love behind him,” Okaro told Pozen.

Copeland had surgery on his leg and his grandmother said he might have to learn how to walk again because doctors had to take a vein from his other leg and they don’t know if his body will accept it.

Cox Media Group

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