12 Dead in Atlanta Shootings
By SHELLEY HILL, AP
ATLANTA (AP) - A day trader opened fire in a brokerage firm Thursday, killing at
least nine people, Mayor Bill Campbell said. Police said the man also shot three
relatives at a house in Atlanta's southern suburbs. Police hunted floor-to-floor in
neighboring buildings in search of the gunman.
``There's an awful lot of blood everywhere,'' the mayor said. Campbell
said the gunman was a day trader who had done business with a brokerage in the building.
The man, whom he identified as Mark O. Barton, 44, ``was concerned about
financial losses,'' he said. Stock indexes had declined Thursday.
The shootings began at All-Tech Investment Group, a day-trading company on the
third floor of the building, company officials said. The gunfire was reported about 3 p.m.
in Two Security Center, which houses the brokerage, a travel agency and other offices. It
is in the wealthy and fashionable Buckhead section in northern Atlanta.
Dozens of police officers swarmed the building. Detective Willie Rosser of
the Henry County police said three relatives of Barton, who had moved from Morrow to
Stockbridge, were found dead at a home in the latter town, 16 miles southeast of Atlanta.
He could not identify them or give any other details. Barton walked into a brokerage
office, then walked across the street and began shooting at another brokerage there, the
mayor said. Four of the victims were killed in one building and five in the other, he
said.
``We have no idea what caused Mr. Barton to begin shooting,'' Campbell said.
``Those who have identified Mr. Barton indicated he came in, had a normal conversation and
then began shooting.'' Jai Ramoutar, director of All-Tech Trading Group, where some of the
shootings took place, said Barton had not traded there in some time.
He came into the office, ``and after speaking with our branch manager suddenly
stood up and for no reason opened fire on the manager and his secretary,'' Ramoutar said
in a statement released from the company's headquarters in Montvale, N.J.
``This man then went into our main trading room and began indiscriminately
shooting the customers,'' he said. ``The man then ran out of our office and continued
shooting in another part of the office building...
``We don't know the reason, if any, for this horrible act of violence.
All-Tech's customers trade their own accounts in our offices and this man was such a
customer,'' he said. Some people were still hiding in offices in the building nearly
three hours after the shooting.
Campbell said police SWAT units were going through every building in the area
floor by floor, office by office, trying to find the gunman.
Police also searched the trunks of cars leaving the area. Harvey Houtkin,
50-year-old president and founder of All-Tech Investment Group, said from his office in
Montvale, N.J., that his employees told him the suspect hadn't traded since April.
``He (the gunman) was a former client.'' Houtkin said. Chris Carter, who works for
Allegiance Telecom on the third floor, said that as police escorted him out, he saw a
man's body lying on the floor.
``They weren't attending to him, which led me to believe he was dead,'' Carter
said.
Scott Belazi, who also works on the third floor of the building, said police
told him a man walked into the building's leasing office on that floor and shot someone.
``They got us out of there,'' he said. ``We saw a bunch of blood in the leasing
office.''
Just last month a psychiatrist in Michigan was killed by his former patient, who
also gunned down a 45-year-old woman and injured four other people in the attack. He then
fatally shot himself.
In April, a 71-year-old man raked the first floor of the Mormon Family History
Library in Salt Lake City with .22-caliber handgun fire, killing two people and wounding
four others before police shot him to death.
The library shooting came just more than three months after a 24-year-old man
allegedly walked into a downtown Salt Lake office building with a grocery sack of bullets
and opened fire. One person died and another suffered minor gunshot wounds in the Jan. 14
shooting.
