Atlanta breathed a sigh of relief after Brian Nichols gave himself up on Saturday. He added another victim to the death toll – a US Customs agent he surprised working at his home in Buckhead. The Atlanta Journal Constitution interview with the woman he held for seven hours Friday night into Saturday morning is amazing. The single mother who lost her husband in a knife fight several years ago knew exactly what to say and do, and even chose to delay tipping off the police when she thought a confrontation would ensue, believing instead that he would let her go on Saturday morning. Read the story here.

Today’s shooting that killed three took place about a half-mile from CNN Center where I work. I drive by the courthouse on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive every morning on the way to the office, and would have likely been right there at 9am when the gunman fired six shots across MLK and killed one of the victims, a sherrif’s deputy, right outside the courthouse.

I had an a 9am meeting today, and came in early to prepare, avoiding the scene.

The brazen gunman wrestled the weapon away from one of the deputies in the courthouse while in a holding area, then shot and killed Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland W. Barnes and his court reporter, 43 year-old Julie Brandau. After he’d escaped the building, he shot and killed the other officer (Sheriff’s Deputy Hoyt Teasley), and carjacked at least two or as many as three vehicles in his efforts to escape, and currently remains at large. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter was pistol whipped and carjacked in the mayhem by the suspect.
UPDATE:CNN is now reporting (and showing) video of the suspect carjacking the AJC reporter in one of Turner’s parking garages, caught on a security camera. Not the one I routinely park in, but right next door. Really quite frightening.
Photo by The Associated Press