Good Guy with a Gun #220: Atlanta, GA

What do you call a man working a second job, carrying concealed, and not dressed like a cop? If you’re CNN, you make sure you call him “an Atlanta police officer.” | Original incident: June 11, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.

Looking back from the perspective of 2024, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said that Jeremy Malone, 34, was “an individual that should never have been possessing a gun.”

Background on the criminal

He had been through eleven previous arrest cycles. His first offense was in 2007, when he was charged with armed robbery. He used a toy semi-automatic handgun — how did the cops know the toy was a semi-automatic and not modified to full auto? [scratches head] — and a taser to rob a Subway of $253. Not exactly starting off slowly, committing a felony like that, though of course not as fast out of the gate as this guy. He pleaded guilty to robbery by intimidation, which cut his time from fifteen in prison to ten.

By 2017, he was back at it: weapons and drugs. Since robbery by intimidation is a felony, he was a prohibited person, and any gun charges should have included possession by a prohibited person.

In October of 2018, he ran from a traffic stop and was found with a gun and marijuana. But don’t worry about that gun… he found it, don’tcha know, and just picked it up off the street. That was part of the sob story that the lawyer passed on to the judge, and I’m sure he totally believed it. “He inadvertently missed court, Judge. I believe he did send some documentation trying to come to court to resolve this case and so he’s done an extra 13 days here.” Do you see how much he suffered from the system? And it totally wasn’t his fault.

Judge Gregory Adams gave him some paternal advice: “If there is a loaded gun lying around on the ground, leave it there. Do not pick it up, do not take possession of it, do not run from the police and fall on the ground and make a noise when the gun falls out of your pocket. So if you don’t pick up the gun, you don’t have to worry about having a loaded gun.”

Sound advice indeed. Just like Adams’ parents had passed on to him, he said with what I can only hope was unbuffered snark.

Here’s the thing that makes me a little crazy: That conversation about the 2018 incident occurred in March 2023. If I read the lawyer’s commentary right:

• October 30, 2018 – January 29, 2019 (92 days): Malone in jail on the DeKalb County charge.

• January 29, 2019 – April 18, 2019 (about 79 days): Released on bond, maybe?

• April 18, 2019 – September 24, 2019 (about 5 months and a week): In custody in Henry County jail because he committed a probation violation with the 2018 crime.

• September 24, 2019 – January 31, 2020 (about 4 months): Transferred from Henry County jail to the Department of Corrections (state prison system) to serve time on the probation violation.

• January 31, 2020 onward: Released from Department of Corrections; the 2018 charges were still pending.

So a total of only about 15 months, as I count it, between both the 2017 and 2018 crimes, at least one of which involves him possessing firearms that were illegal for him to possess.

His lawyer counted 250 or 260 days of time served for the 2018 offense. The judge sentenced him to a year, with credit for time served — a little over three months.

Remember that this sentencing was in March, 2023, based on incidents in 2017 and 2018. That’s important because in between those dates, in 2021, Malone was arrested for threatening a woman with a knife. A grand jury indicted him in December of 2023 for aggravated assault and possession of a knife during the commission of a felony.

The guy commits crimes so often that the legal system can’t keep up.

The Peachtree Mall shooting

All of this brings us to June, 2024, when — despite useless gun laws and a rap sheet longer than an extended magazine — Jeremy Malone entered the food court at Atlanta’s Peachtree Center Mall, armed, at around 2:15 PM. He physically attacked a 47-year-old man (we don’t know why) and then shot him.

WSB-TV 2 quotes witness Kemba Walker Jr. saying, “I hear one shot and then I’m thinking somebody dropped something, and then I hear another shot and another shot and another shot. And then I see people scattering, running around.”

In short order, he had shot two other people as well. All told, he wounded the 47-year-old man and two women, ages 69 and 70 — all non-fatally.

CNN’s article will tell you that “Malone was shot by an Atlanta Police officer at the food court before he was taken into custody.” They’ll link you to another article with the headline, A man shot and wounded 3 people in a downtown Atlanta food court before he was shot by a police officer, officials say.

So clearly this is an example of a cop getting the bad guy, right? And I don’t cover police actions. I cover normal people engaged in the protection of themselves or others.

But if you drop down one, two, three… yes, seven paragraphs into one of the CNN articles, you’ll see that the cop was off duty. (The other CNN article doesn’t mention it at all.)

In fact, he was working an extra job — he didn’t look like a cop, and you can bet that he was carrying concealed. He was, in all relevant ways, a civilian. A brave civilian who deserves credit for everything he did that day, and I salute him.

But CNN really, really wants you to know that an Atlanta police officer shot Malone. Because being a police officer gives him super powers, or super-duper training, or… I don’t know what, but heaven forfend that someone who doesn’t represent the state stopped a potential mass shooting.

Because, y’know, this...is CNN.

Anyway: All three victims went to the hospital but were expected to be okay, Malone was hit with a raft of new charges, and the Peachtree Mall reopened for business later that day — thanks to a man with a gun getting a bite at the food court.

Sources

This received massive coverage, so I’m going to stick to a few key sources.

Primary: The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation, since the shooter was one of Atlanta’s own officers. GBI’s press release is on their website.

Excellent local coverage: WSB-TV 2 did great work here. The TV coverage embedded in each page is worth watching, which isn’t always the case. Across these four pages, you get community reactions, eyewitness reports, police statements, and Malone’s background.

• Witness describes hearing 25-30 shots inside Peachtree Center cafeteria during ‘shootout’

• Convicted felon shot by Atlanta police after opening fire inside Peachtree Center, injuring 3

• Man accused of opening fire in downtown Atlanta food court, injuring 3 identified

• Accused Peachtree Center shooter has history of crimes across state, records show

Since I mocked CNN roundly, I should probably link to their stories:

• A man shot and wounded 3 people in a downtown Atlanta food court before he was shot by a police officer, officials say (This is the one that actually mentions that he was off duty and working a second job at the time.)

• The man who shot and wounded 3 people in a downtown Atlanta food court has been identified

…and hopefully that’s the last time I’ll ever link to CNN.