Mark David Chapman is an American man who murdered English musician John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980. As Lennon walked into the archway of The Dakota, his apartment building on the Upper West Side, Chapman fired five shots at the musician from a few yards away with a Charter Arms Undercover .38 Special revolver. Lennon was hit four times from the back. He was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. Chapman remained at the scene following the shooting and made no attempt to flee or resist arrest.
The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, are a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Centennial Olympic Park is a 22-acre (89,000 m2) public park located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, owned and operated by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. It was built by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) as part of the infrastructure improvements for the 1996 Summer Olympics. It plays host to millions of visitors a year and several events, including a summer popular music concert series, the annual SweetWater 420 Fest and an annual Independence Day concert and fireworks display.
Samuel Ernest Vandiver Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician who was the 73rd governor of Georgia from 1959 to 1963.
Samuel Marvin Griffin, Sr. was an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia.
Raven Arms was a firearms manufacturer established in 1970 by firearms designer George Jennings. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibiting the importation of inexpensive handguns prompted Jennings to design the MP-25, a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol, and enter the firearms business. Raven has been referred to as the original "Ring of Fire" company, a term describing companies known for producing inexpensive Saturday night special handguns.
Brian Gene Nichols is a convicted murderer known for his escape and killing spree in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 11, 2005. Nichols was on trial for rape when he escaped custody and murdered Rowland Barnes, the judge presiding over his trial, a court reporter, a Fulton County Sheriff's deputy, and later an ICE special agent. Twenty-six hours after a large-scale manhunt was launched in the metropolitan Atlanta area, Nichols was taken into custody. The prosecution charged him with committing 54 crimes during the escape; he was found guilty on all counts on November 7, 2008, and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Troy Anthony Davis was a man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant and was intervening to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot when he was murdered. During Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified Davis had confessed the murder to them. There were 34 witnesses who testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
A familicide is a type of murder or murder-suicide in which an individual kills multiple close family members in quick succession, most often children, spouses, siblings, or parents. In half the cases, the killer lastly kills themselves in a murder-suicide. If only the parents are killed, the case may also be referred to as a parricide. Where all members of a family are killed, the crime may be referred to as family annihilation.
The shooting of Anthony Hill, a U.S. Air Force veteran, occurred on March 9, 2015, in Chamblee, Georgia, near Atlanta. Hill, fatally shot by police officer Robert Olsen, suffered from mental illness and was naked and unarmed at the time of the incident. The incident was covered in local and national press and sparked the involvement of Black Lives Matter and other advocacy groups who demonstrated their anger at the shooting. In January 2016, a grand jury indicted officer Olsen on two counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault. Nearing the fourth anniversary of the homicide, it was decided that Olsen's trial would be rescheduled for September 23, 2019, with delays including three successive judges having recused themselves in the case.
On September 16, 2017, Scout Schultz, a 21-year-old student of the Georgia Institute of Technology, was shot once and killed by Tyler Beck, an officer of the Georgia Tech Police Department. Schultz had summoned police to the scene by making a false claim that someone was standing outside their dorm with a knife and a gun. They then stood outside the dorm carrying a multitool. When the police arrived, Schultz walked towards the police, asking them to shoot. The multitool contained a screwdriver and a short blade that was not out, but given the earlier call, the police believed that Schultz was holding a gun.
On May 31, 2019, a mass shooting occurred at a municipal building in the Princess Anne area of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The gunman, DeWayne Craddock, who was a disgruntled city employee, fatally shot 12 people and wounded four others before he was killed by responding police officers. It is the second-deadliest workplace shooting in U.S. history after the 1986 Edmond post office shooting and the deadliest mass shooting in Virginia since the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods, and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes.
Reinaldo Javier Rivera is a Spanish-born American serial killer who abducted, raped, and killed four women in South Carolina and Georgia between 1999 and 2000, all in the Augusta metropolitan area. He was convicted in one of those deaths and sentenced to death in the latter state, where he still remains on death row.
On the night of June 12, 2020, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man, was confronted by officers of the APD and was shot by Atlanta Police Department (APD) officer Garrett Rolfe.
On August 7, 2020, Julian Edward Roosevelt Lewis, an unarmed 60-year-old American carpenter, was fatally shot by Georgia State Patrol officer Jacob Gordon Thompson, on a rural road in Screven County, Georgia. Thompson attempted to stop Lewis for driving a vehicle with a broken tail light. When Lewis failed to stop, Thompson performed a PIT maneuver to force Lewis's car into a ditch and shot Lewis once in the face. On August 14, Thompson was charged with felony murder.
On March 16, 2021, a shooting spree occurred at two spas and a massage parlor in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Eight people were killed and a ninth was wounded. A suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, was taken into custody later that day. Long pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The George Floyd protests in Atlanta were a series of protests occurring in Atlanta, the capital and largest city of Georgia, United States. The protests were part of the George Floyd protests and, more broadly, the 2020–2021 United States racial unrest, which began shortly after the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. On May 26, protesting occurred in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area and, over the next several weeks, protests spread to cities throughout the United States and then internationally.
