Shooting outside East Atlanta’s Graveyard Tavern is eerily familiar
For the second time in eight years, a robbery suspect is killed — in the same parking lot.
Late Wednesday night, two bar patrons leaving East Atlanta’s Graveyard Tavern were approached by 29-year-old Jamarcus Usher. Fearing that Usher was a threat, one of the bar patrons knocked him to the ground back a few feet with the door of his pickup truck, then shot and killed him after Usher raised a weapon.
Eerily, Usher’s MySpace page lists his occupation as “staying alive.”
Another bit of strangeness: Usher died in almost the exact spot where, eight years ago, another robbery suspect was shot and killed.
It’s not yet clear if this week’s shooting has anything to do with the climate of fear that has descended on Atlanta. Generally speaking, people are spooked following a recent spate of violent crime, including the shooting death of John Henderson. Henderson, a bartender at the Standard in nearby Grant Park, was killed Jan. 7 by armed robbers who broke into the Memorial Drive restaurant.
It seems to me that Atlanta — and East Atlanta Village in particular — has been through this before.