Atlanta police release 911 calls from Saturday’s Piedmont Park shooting

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Atlanta police have released the 911 calls from the shooting in Piedmont Park that left one teen dead and another injured on Saturday night.

The four calls paint a picture of people running through the park as gunshots rang out, telling dispatchers they saw multiple people hurt and trying to lead police and medics to them.

“Piedmont Park. There are people shooting,” said one caller, out of breath from running.

“I just heard shots fired and there’s a girl laying on the ground,” said another caller, who told the dispatcher she’d been at the park for the 404 Day festival.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Teenage girl killed, another injured in shooting at Piedmont Park, police say

The shooting started in a separate part of the park once the event ended. Police believe four people opened fire, but have not identified the suspects.

“When they started shooting, I heard somebody screaming in pain. Somebody out here is hurt, and it’s not just one person, it’s multiple people,” another 911 caller reported. “It sounded like he had an automatic gun or something. It just kept going and going.”

That gunfire hurt 15-year-old Italia Wilson and killed 16-year-old Tianah Robinson, who officers said were innocent bystanders. A $15,000 reward is now on the table for information leading to the shooters.

Those were just two of the 11 people shot in Atlanta over the weekend, several of them teenagers. Some were self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and some began as arguments that led to gunfire.

In the other deadly case, 3-year-old Armani Lyons was shot in the head and killed in his southwest Atlanta apartment. Police said he had been left with a 70-year-old babysitter, but no arrests have been announced.

While Mayor Andre Dickens said the city hasn’t seen a weekend like this in a long time, he said parents need to know where their kids are, especially as hundreds of thousands of them from across metro Atlanta are out on spring break this week.

“APD is increasing their patrols, and they will bring charges to parents and caregivers of minors who are violating our curfew,” he said.

The curfew for minors in Atlanta is midnight to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. However, several of these shootings happened around 9 p.m., before curfew was in effect.