ATLANTA — Police have identified the man shot and killed early Saturday in the parking lot of a club next to the Varsity restaurant in midtown.
Atlanta police said 24-year-old Morie Brooks, of Peachtree City was shot once in the back by another club patron at about 5 a.m. outside the Quad on Spring Street.
QUAD owner Rick Day, in a statement emailed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said the shooting stemmed from an argument between two groups at the club that later escalated on the outside.
“According to witnesses and videotape, two groups of people at a party held at QUAD got into an argument over a comment made to a woman, which then escalated outside,” Day said in his email. “One group including the perpetrator headed North up Spring towards Arby’s and the other group headed south toward Concentra.”
The urgent care center is located on Spring Street.
“When the victim, his friends and brother were in the Lanier [parking] lot next to Concentra at 688 Spring, a further altercation developed resulting in the death of the victim, who died in his brothers arms,” Day said. He did not identify the victims, according to the AJC.
Day said security cameras “clearly show the perpetrator flashing gang signs and making gestures of hostility.”
He identified the shooter as a black man in his 20s with dreadlocks and wearing a pea jacket. Three other men in the group also were black and in their 20s, the owner said. They and the driver, possibly wearing a plaid shirt, left in a late-2000 model green Toyota Camry, Day told police, according to the AJC.
“QUAD security clearly remembers the suspects because the suspect had $4,000 in cash on him when searched for weapons,” Day said in his email to the AJC. “The security officer admonished the suspect to be careful flashing cash.” Day said the man bragged he had a gun in his car and was confident he would not be accosted.”
Police have not yet provided the name of the suspected gunman.
WSBTV
