Two standoffs in Atlanta over the past few days have put the city on edge. One resulted in the brutal killing of a pregnant mother and her son.
CBS News reports Stockbridge police were responding to a domestic dispute on Thursday morning when a gunman shot and wounded two officers. The incident, recorded on body camera, shows the two officers being ambushed upon entry of the front door and retreating, wounded.
The gunman reportedly yelled that he had a hostage before threatening to fire rounds of ammunition he claimed to have.
After shooting the responding officers — one in the hand and another in the hip — 47-year-old Atlanta native Anthony Tony Bailey Jr. then barricaded himself in the home with the pregnant woman and her teenage son. It is uncertain if the victims were dead or alive at the time.
The less-injured officer reportedly aided the more wounded one and fled them both to safety for medical treatment at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Neither of their injuries is life-threatening.
Police Captain Joey Smith of Henry County was hopeful that the hostages would survive, stating to KUTV 2 that a negotiator was in communication with the gunman.
"We're going to wait as long as we can," he told the reporter.
They held off for 15 more hours but eventually forced entry after the gunman refused to show proof of the hostage's well-being and became unresponsive.
Late Thursday night, officers fired gas into the Stockbridge home but were met with rounds of bullets.
By pre-dawn Friday morning, the SWAT team decided to intervene on the scene again, this time finding three dead bodies.
They found 39-year-old Sandra Renee White, who was eight months pregnant, in the home's garage. Her son, 16-year-old Arkeyvion White, was in an upstairs bedroom.
The gunman, Bailey, was also found in the bedroom, dead via suicide.
Anetria White, sister to Sandra and aunt of Arkeyvion, told WAGA-TV that she had called the police early that morning after seeing blood in the garage. Before walking in any further, she asked for the police to arrive to check on the occupants of the home.
"I don't know what to say," she told WGCL. "If you come over to your sister's house and you see her dead in the garage and then you wait from 11 o'clock in the morning until now you find out all three of them are gone."
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“We was getting ready to give her a baby shower tomorrow,” Sandra White’s mother, Kathie White, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Sandra White was a registered working nurse at WellStar Health System and had been taking classes at Georgia Southern University to further her training in the field. Arkeyvion was a football player at Dutchtown High School.
The relationship of the gunman to the victims has not been reported.
TRAGIC: Vigil held for tonight for pregnant woman, unborn child and her son on the day family planned to hold her baby shower: https://t.co/fr9wseZhUG
@CJenningsWSB was there for a LIVE report at 11 p.m. pic.twitter.com/HAYVhvUYHh— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) April 7, 2019
Days later, another tense SWAT standoff occurred in Henry County on Monday. A father of one held five children, ages 3 to 10, hostage in a home after a dispute with his girlfriend.
Cortney Chones, 33, reportedly shot bullets into the air, which prompted the police to be called to the scene after 2 a.m., as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. As officers were speaking to the girlfriend and mother of the children outside the home, the man reportedly barricaded himself in the house with the sleeping kids.
Gene Smith, the woman’s father and grandfather of the hostages, said that he didn't believe the boyfriend would harm the kids, but he had his worries following the publicized death of Sandra White and her son.
“I thought about that,” Smith said, “I hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, and it didn’t.”
The children were reportedly not harmed nor traumatized, and no further shots were heard from the home during the five-hour standoff. All five of the children were released from the house dressed in uniform for school at the time of their usual departure from the home.
“They are with their mama now,” Smith said, relieved. “I’m good. I’m happy now.”
Atlanta police spokesman Jarius Daugherty was extremely satisfied with the outcome, given the week's prior tragic events. “This is five kids who were not involved in this incident,” Daugherty said. “It’s a dispute between a mother and father. The children played no part in that.”
WATCH: Police detail release of children hostages and arrest of man from barricaded home in SW #Atlanta – https://t.co/18Fu3WbXYR
pic.twitter.com/85X8sFIJwQ— John Spink (@johnjspink) April 8, 2019
Chones was arrested and charged with misdemeanors of simple battery, reckless conduct and obstruction. As of Monday, his bond has not yet been declared.
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