ATLANTA – Police arrested a woman at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday evening, about two hours after authorities said that she killed two people and injured a third in shootings at two separate midtown addresses, WSB-TV reported.
Raissa Kengne, 34, faces charges including two counts of murder, four counts of aggravated assault and one count of false imprisonment.
Update 9:25 a.m. EDT Aug. 23: The president of a company that managed one of the buildings where Monday’s shootings took place identified the surviving victim as Mike Horne, chief building engineer for Beacon Management Services, according to WSB.
Beacon Management Services President Lisa Simmons said Horne’s condition was not known on Tuesday morning. He remains hospitalized, WSB reported.
Earlier, officials with the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the two people slain in Monday’s shooting as Wesley Freeman and Michael Shinners, according to WSB. Shinners was a property manager who died after being shot at the 1280 West condominium building, the news station reported. Freeman was shot and killed at an office building on Peachtree Street NE, less than a mile away, WSB reported.
The events leading up to Monday’s shooting remained unclear Tuesday. However, Simmons described Kengne to WSB as a “disgruntled resident” of the 1280 West building.
Court records obtained by the news station showed Kengne previously filed a federal lawsuit that named Freeman and Shinners, among several others.
Kengne claimed that she faced “retaliation, persecution, harassment, intimidation, threats, burglary, computer hacking, phone spoofing, and other attacks” after reporting a violation of SEC regulations while working as an IT audit manager for BDO USA. In the complaint, filed in May, Kengne named Freeman as a member of BDO USA’s management team who served as an IT audit director.
The accounting firm has an office in the Peachtree Street NE building where one of the shootings took place.
In court records, Kengne said that she had lived at 1280 West “for many years” and claimed that people, including officials with the management company Beacon Management Services, were “responsible for allowing unauthorized individuals to break into (Kengne’s) home in order to facilitate the harassment and retaliation.”
The lawsuit was subsequently dismissed, WSB reported. Last week, Kengne filed an appeal of the decision, according to the news station.
Update 10:38 p.m. EDT Aug. 22: An official source with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed to WSB late Monday that the suspected shooter has been identified as Raissa Kengnem.
The TV station reported that Kengnem was arrested by ATF task force officers at the airport’s international terminal “after an ATF agent contacted a taxi company and found out she had been dropped off at the airport.” The arrest was made before the suspect passed through security, and officers found a 9mm pistol in her purse, the ATF source confirmed.
Meanwhile, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the two victims killed in the shootings as Michael Shinners, 60, of Alpharetta and 41-year-old Wesley Freeman of Atlanta, WSB reported.
According to police, Shinners died at the scene, and Freeman was transported to an area hospital where he later died from his injuries.
Original report: According to police, responding officers found two people who had been shot at a West Peachtree Street condominium just before 2 p.m. EDT, one of whom was declared dead at the scene, the TV station reported.
According to WSB, police then responded to a second address, where they found a third person suffering from a gunshot wound who later died.
Authorities did not immediately release the woman’s name or a possible motive for the shootings but did confirm that they recovered a handgun when arresting her, The New York Times reported.
“We do not believe these were random acts of violence,” Darin Schierbaum, interim chief of the Atlanta Police Department, said during a news conference. “We believe individuals were likely targeted that were harmed today.”
Meanwhile, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens praised the “strong coordination and professionalism” of law enforcement agencies and the “vital support and information from the public” that he credited with helping officers apprehend the woman so quickly.
Police also said that an “extensive camera network” aided their search, the Times reported.
“I want to state clearly that the security of the airport was never compromised,” Dickens said during the news conference. “The suspect was apprehended prior to being in any controlled areas of the airport.”
The surviving victim was transported to an area medical center for treatment, WSB reported.
