ATLANTA — Imagine you’re riding home from work, listening to music and out of nowhere you hear a bang.
Ardra Tolbert Caldwell says it happened to her, and she was not involved in road rage.
A bullet traveled from her trunk through the driver’s seat on Monday on Interstate 285 near Highway 166. Amazingly, the bullet did not pierce the driver’s skin.
Atlanta police told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that the proliferation of guns in metro Atlanta is causing the victimization of innocent people, including drivers like Tolbert Caldwell.
She said she was on her way home from work Monday driving on I-285 near Highway 166 when she was shot.
“It hit me in the back. Thank God it didn’t penetrate into my body. I guess everything it went through must of slowed it down. But it hit me so hard that it felt like my back was on fire, just driving,” Tolbert Caldwell said. “I was taken to Grady (Memorial Hospital). They were very thorough. Did all the scans.”
Tolbert Caldwell told Winne when she pulled over and saw the bullet hole in the trunk, she grasped at what had happened, though she had heard it.
“It was like a big firecracker. Pop! Like you hear fireworks. And you hear the big ones that sound like a boom,” Tolbert Caldwell said.
She indicated in the first moments, she thought something was wrong with her car. She later realized a bullet had passed through the back and front seats and her clothes.
“It was out of nowhere,” Tolbert Caldwell said.
“You don’t know who fired the shot?” Winne asked Tolbert Caldwell.
“No,” she answered.
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Tolbert Caldwell said she didn’t notice any road rage nearby and doesn’t know why it happened.
An Atlanta police detective has contacted her and she’s got an abrasion surrounded by bruising where the bullet hit.
“You OK?” Winne asked Tolbert Caldwell.
“Yes, I have pain with sometimes breathing or bending over. I can’t sit back. Sometimes I have to sit back because the abrasion, I guess where the bruising is, is still tender,” Tolbert Caldwell said.
“The man upstairs was looking after you?” Winne asked Tolbert Caldwell.
“Yes!” she said. “It could have just went straight through me. And I could have not been here,” Tolbert Caldwell said.
“That was very close to your heart,” Winne pointed out.
“Yes. Very close to my heart,” Tolbert Caldwell said.
She told Winne that she doesn’t know where the slug is that hit her.
The police report indicates the victim’s vehicle was processed by APD crime scene investigators, so we don’t know what that turned up.
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