Atlanta Reporters Describe Mayhem Following Shootings and Carjackings
By Joe Strupp
Published: March 11, 2005 updated 12:20 PM ET
NEW YORK It was about 9:15 a.m. and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Drew Jubera had just parked his car in a garage several blocks from the paper and used mostly by newspaper employees when he heard a woman screaming. He did not know that blocks away a man had just shot and killed a judge, a court reporter, and deputy and then escaped.
"I ran over to her and it turned out she had just been carjacked, and I helped get her to the parking garage offices and with the police," Jubera told E&P, referring to the woman who also worked for the paper, but not in the editorial department.
"I left and started walking to the AJC, and I saw Don O'Briant and he was hurt and bleeding above his eye."
Jubera said O'Briant, another reporter for the paper, told him he had just been carjacked in a different garage and the perpetrator had made off with O'Briant's 1997 green Honda Accord. "He said a guy took his car, told him to get into the trunk, and threatened to kill him," Jubera recounted. "Then he said the guy hit him with the gun or his fist, he wasn't sure, and [O'Briant] ran away. When he ran, he fell and broke his wrist."
Jubera said he took O'Briant to the same police officers who were aiding the woman and discovered it was the same person who likely committed both attacks. "It was clear it was the same guy," Jubera said. "He has apparently been on a spree and everyone knows who he is. They know it was the same guy."
O'Briant told the story himself to his newspaper from the emergency room at Atlanta Medical Center while getting stiches above his left eye, about 90 minutes after the carjacking happened:
"I had just parked my car in the parking lot behind the Chinese restarurant at the corner of Spring Street and Marietta Street and was going to work, a little after 9 a.m.," the paper reported on its Web site.
"This person pulled in beside me, and I noticed that he had pulled into a handicapped spot," O'Briant said. "He was a young, athletic looking black man, and he didn't have a shirt on, but I figured he was probably in town for the basketball tournament.
"First he asked how to get to Lenox Square. Then he pulled a gun and said 'Give me your keys or I'll kill you!'
"I gave him the keys, and then he said 'Get in the trunk.' I said no. I thought maybe I was going to be killed, but I wasn't going to get in the trunk.
"I turned to run, and that's when he hit me in the head with his gun. I fell down, and I got up and ran into a garbage bin. I got up again and ran. I scrambled into the street, waiting for the shots to come, but they didn't come. He must have been out of bullets, because he didn't shoot me.
"I couldn't see, because blood was coming out all over my eye. I went to the Chinese restaurant and banged on the door, but there was no one there, so I started out into Marietta Street, and that's when I ran into co-worker Drew Jubera."
