ATLANTA — The family of one of two people killed in a nightclub shooting says they want to know how security allowed the shooter to get a gun inside the business. They’ve hired an attorney to get answers.
“It’s just senseless. My sister was out here having a good time and our lives are just altered forever,” Telia Wheeler said.
The family of 21-year-old Mari Creighton told Channel 2′s Tom Jones their lives have been altered forever after a gunman somehow got inside the Elleven45 Lounge in Buckhead Sunday and shot and killed her and Nakyris Ridley.
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Four others, including Creighton’s niece, Taylor Holmes, were wounded.
Now Creighton’s family has hired an attorney to find out how the gun got inside.
“Someone got in there with a gun because someone failed to find that gun and they were negligent in their basic responsibility,” attorney Michael Sterling Sr. said.
Sterling says he’s considering filing a lawsuit.
“We’re looking at negligent security,” he explained
Sterling says he knows the lounge was checking patrons for prohibited items that night because security made Creighton remove mace from her keychain.
“She was like, ‘Oh, I forgot it,’ and she removed it,” he explained.
He wonders why security couldn’t find the gun the shooter brought in.
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Sterling says it’s important to make sure the lounge is held accountable.
“The only way that we can ensure that is if the owners of this place are held accountable and responsible, and if that means shutting them down, then that’s something we will support,” he said while standing outside the club.
Sterling was bothered the lounge is advertising parties for the weekend so soon after the deadly shooting. He says that’s hurtful to the family.
“I just left a mother who’s grieving the loss of her daughter, who lost her daughter on Mother’s Day morning,” he said.
A man who said he is the property manager at the club’s location said the club is not having parties here this weekend.
Police continue investigating this shooting.
Meanwhile, Creighton’s family is planning a funeral for the Albany State volleyball player who was one semester from graduating.
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