Witnesses: Domestic dispute leads to shooting rampage

ATLANTA — A metro Atlanta neighborhood is trying to return to normal after residents say a man turned a domestic dispute into a wild shooting that endangered dozens.

Witnesses in the Gladstone Apartments on Park Avenue in southeast Atlanta said a 20-year-old man went to extremes to terrorize his girlfriend and community Thursday morning.

They told Channel 2's Carl Willis the shooter's girlfriend had to run for her life as he chased her.

"She ran up the hill again, and I'm hollering, 'Run, run!' Because I had opened my back door for her, but she just stopped and tried to talk him down," said neighbor Ernita Blaylock.

She said bullets were flying left and right through the apartment complex, and the shooter endangered dozens of lives.

"All while he was running, he was shooting," she said.

According to friends, the shooter lives in the complex.

Witnesses said his girlfriend ducked into several apartments and the rent office to escape the gunfire, but that didn't stop him.

"He pointed the gun at me, and it scared me," said a neighbor who saw the girlfriend run into her apartment only to have the door kicked in moments later.

"I was telling him not to shoot the lady, pleading with him not to shoot her," she said.

She said he may have listened.

According to the witness, the shooter and his girlfriend argued about their relationship for a while, and moments later, he walked to a courtyard and shot himself.

"I thought he killed her when I heard the shot," said Blaylock. "When I jumped up and ran around there, he's laying there with the gun beside him."

The Atlanta Police Department has handed the case over to the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office.

WSBTV