Gwinnett County police are still looking for the two people accused of attacking Michael Thomas at the Grove Point Apartments in Norcross.
On Tuesday, the Gwinnett County Police Department said that on September 9, two guys who were not known to them approached the victim in the parking lot of the Grove Point Apartment Homes in Norcross. During the fight, he was attacked and shot two times.
FOX 5 Atlanta found out that the victim was Michael Thomas, who lives in an apartment complex. Thomas said the trouble started when he was sitting on his porch and saw three young guys he didn’t know hanging around the buildings.
Thomas said he asked them to move away from the front of the breezeway. One of them reportedly said, “Okay, but you don’t know who you’re talking to.”
Thomas said that when he took out his trash a little later, the young guys met him in the parking lot.
“He tried to shoot me twice in the head, but both times the shots hit the rock and bounced away. The third person with them started running away. He must not have known that was going to happen, because he turned around and shot me twice in the right leg,” he said.
Gwinnett County police confirmed what witnesses told FOX 5: that one of the suspects hit Thomas in the head with a gun before he was shot.
Thomas was taken to the hospital right away, where he had surgery. This past Sunday, he was able to go home again. He has to use a walker now, and a bullet is still stuck in his leg.
Thomas told FOX 5: “You won’t expect something like that to happen just because you asked someone to move out of the way.”
Thomas said that he wants the suspects to be found and brought to justice so that no one else in the complex has to go through what he did.
“All I can do is thank God that I’m living. “I can still get up, breathe, and move around, but for me and my wife, the most important thing is to be here for our kids,” he said.
Tuesday, Gwinnett County police shared video from a doorbell camera that showed the two possible attackers going around the complex. They did this to try to figure out who they were.
Police said that both were Black men and that one was big and had dreadlocks, while the other was skinny and had a short hair. On the night of the crime, the bigger man was wearing blue shorts and a black shirt. The other man was wearing a black jacket, blue pants, and green underwear.
Witnesses told FOX 5 that they are young people who “constantly asked for money around the complex.”
Detectives in Gwinnett County ask anyone who knows anything about the suspects or what happened to call them at (770) 513-5300. Call Crime Stoppers at (404) 577-TIPS (8477) if you want to stay private. There is a cash prize for information that leads to an arrest or charge.
