Atlanta Mayor to Protesters: 'You Shot and Killed a Baby'

8-year-old Secoriea Turner gunned down near Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was killed
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 6, 2020 6:30 AM CDT

"Raw emotions and frustration" is how 11Alive describes Atlanta after more than a dozen people were shot, four fatally, in less than 24 hours over the holiday weekend. Among the most devastating of those shootings: 8-year-old Secoriea Turner, who was gunned down and killed near the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was killed last month by former police officer Garrett Rolfe. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that after Brooks' shooting, protests sprung up around the city, and on Saturday night around 10pm, "a group of armed individuals" went after a car that tried to turn into a parking lot blocked by illegally placed barriers on Pryor Road, says a police rep. "At some point, someone in that group opened fire on the vehicle, striking it multiple times and striking the child who was inside," he notes. Secoriea, who was in the car with her mother and an adult friend, was that child.

Secoriea was taken to Atlanta Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, per NBC News. "You shot and killed a baby," Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said at a Sunday presser. "Enough is enough." Cops said they'd taken down barricades that protesters had erected outside the University Avenue Wendy's, but Bottoms said she "received a notice the barriers were back up about 45 minutes before I got the message that Secoriea was killed," per the AJC. She added that while officials had been trying to talk with protesters before the shooting, the time for talk is now done. "It's over," she said. Two suspects are on the radar: one who was said to have been wearing a white T-shirt, the other dressed "like a bounty hunter" in all black, per CNN. Police are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to Secoriea's killers. Anyone with info is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 404-577-TIPS (8477).

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