Georgia · Southeast Atlanta · Crime & Courts

Browns Mill Road Shooting in Southeast Atlanta: 85-Year-Old Woman Shot on Her Own Porch

Atlanta police believe a 21-year-old man one block away on Lindsey Drive was the intended target. Two people were shot. Neither was killed. No arrest has been announced.

What happened on Browns Mill Road in southeast Atlanta?

An 85-year-old woman was shot while she was sitting on the porch of her own home near Browns Mill Road Southeast and Lindsey Drive in southeast Atlanta, according to FOX 5 Atlanta and WSB-TV.

A 21-year-old man was shot a short distance away in what police are treating as the same episode of gunfire. Two people were hurt in total. Neither outlet reports that anyone was killed.

Police believe the 21-year-old man was the intended target — not the woman on the porch. Both were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Everything on this page is attributed to one of those two named outlets. Where they say different things, this page says so instead of blending them together.

Where is Browns Mill Road and Lindsey Drive?

Browns Mill Road Southeast runs through the Lakewood Heights area on Atlanta’s southeast side, in Fulton County, ZIP code 30315, per OpenStreetMap street data.

The two scenes were not the same address, and the reporting on the second one is not identical between the two outlets:

• The 85-year-old woman was on Browns Mill Road. Both outlets place the incident near Browns Mill Road and Lindsey Drive.
• The 21-year-old man was one block away on Lindsey Drive, per WSB-TV. FOX 5 Atlanta describes him only as a man officers found on a nearby street, without naming it.

Attention: the diagram below is schematic. Neither outlet published a house number or a block for either scene, and this page does not plot one.

Reference coordinates for the Browns Mill Road SE corridor in Lakewood Heights, per OpenStreetMap: 33.7014° N, 84.3762° W. They locate the street, not either shooting scene.

When did it happen, and why the two reports differ

The two outlets do not agree here, because only one of them gives a time at all.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported the shooting happened Monday afternoon, before 4 p.m. The Monday before publication was Aug. 10, 2026.

WSB-TV gives no date and no time for the shooting. Its report carries a publication timestamp of Aug. 11, 2026, but that is when the story was posted, not when the gunfire happened, and this page will not present the two as the same thing.

What police said about the woman on the porch

The detail that carried this story is a plain one. She was on her own porch, at her own house, doing nothing at all, when the shooting started around her.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that police said the woman was simply sitting on her porch when the violence broke out. She was struck and taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. Loved ones told FOX 5 Atlanta she underwent surgery there. FOX 5 reported she “remains in good spirits despite her injuries.”

Neither outlet describes where on her body she was hit, how many times she was hit, or what the surgery was for. Those are the questions people ask first, and no source has answered them.

Why police believe the 21-year-old was the intended target

Police believe the 21-year-old man was the intended target of the gunfire, WSB-TV reported. The 85-year-old woman was not.

That is the finding as published. No agency has said publicly why investigators reached it — no motive has been released, no dispute or prior incident has been described, and no relationship between the two people who were shot has been reported.

WSB-TV reported that police said they need the 21-year-old victim to identify the person who shot him and to establish a motive. That is a meaningful sentence: it means that as of that report, investigators did not have a named shooter, and the person best positioned to give them one was himself in the hospital.

Are the two shootings connected?

Yes, according to investigators. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that investigators believe the two shootings are connected.

What “connected” does not mean here is that anyone has explained the sequence publicly. No source has said which person was shot first, whether the shots came from one gun or several, whether the shooter or shooters were on foot or in the vehicle investigators identified, or how far the gunfire travelled between the two scenes. One block is the only distance figure on the record, and it comes from WSB-TV.

What the Atlanta Police Department has said

The Atlanta Police Department is the investigating agency. The one named officer quoted in either report is Atlanta Police Captain Germain Dearlove, who told WSB-TV:

“This was a reckless incident, and the Atlanta Police Department will work tirelessly to identify the suspects involved,”

Read the noun in that sentence carefully: “suspects,” plural. That is the department’s own word, and it is the only public indication of how many people police may be looking for. No number has been given, and no one has been named.

What is known about the suspect vehicle

One thing, and only one thing. WSB-TV reported that investigators said they identified a vehicle that was involved in the shooting.

That is the entire public record on the vehicle. No make, no model, no color, no year, no tag, no direction of travel, and no photograph or still image has been released in either report. If you are searching for a description of the car, there isn’t one yet — and any description circulating that is not attributed to the Atlanta Police Department should be treated as unverified.

Has anyone been arrested?

No arrest is announced in either report. No suspect has been named, no charge has been filed publicly, and no one has been described as being in custody.

Captain Dearlove’s statement — that the department “will work tirelessly to identify the suspects involved” — is the language of an open case, not a closed one. Anyone eventually charged in Georgia is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court, and this page will not attach a name to this shooting before an agency does.

Why we are not naming the 85-year-old woman

Because neither FOX 5 Atlanta nor WSB-TV named her. That is the whole reason, and it is a sufficient one.

She is a living victim of a violent crime in an active investigation, she is 85 years old, she has just come out of surgery, and the person police believe fired the shots has not been identified. Publishing the address or the name of a shooting victim while the shooter is unknown is not a neutral act. The Local Alert will not publish her name unless she or her family chooses to make it public, or an agency releases it.

About the word “auntie” — and who said it

FOX 5 Atlanta’s coverage refers to the woman as the neighborhood “auntie.” In FOX 5’s report the phrase is presented as something police said she is known as — not as a direct quotation from a named officer. It appears here the same way, as a characterization carried in FOX 5’s reporting, and it is not placed in quotation marks as though an officer said it aloud in an interview.

There is a second name-related point worth being explicit about, because it is exactly the kind of thing that gets scrambled in aggregation. The name Ethel Turner appears in WSB-TV’s report as a neighbor being interviewed. She is not the woman who was shot. If you see that name attached to the victim anywhere, it is wrong.

What is known about the condition of the two people shot

Both people who were shot were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

• The 85-year-old woman: she underwent surgery at Grady and “remains in good spirits despite her injuries,” per FOX 5 Atlanta. No medical detail beyond that has been published.
• The 21-year-old man: he is also at Grady and is believed by police to have been the intended target. No condition has been reported for him at all — not stable, not critical, not anything.

No one was killed. Neither report describes a death, and this page does not imply one.

How to get an Atlanta police report

This is a shooting, so the document is a police incident report from the Atlanta Police Department — not a Georgia State Patrol accident report, which is what most people are used to requesting.

Two practical points that save people a week:

• You need the incident number. Ask the responding officer or the department for it and write it down. Every later request goes faster with it.
• An open investigation limits what is released. Records tied to an active case can be withheld or heavily redacted while the case is open. That is normal and it is not a brush-off.

Requests go to the Atlanta Police Department directly. Our general Georgia walkthrough for pulling a report is here: how to get a Georgia report. The Local Alert cannot pull a report for you and does not hold copies.

How to give Atlanta police information

Captain Dearlove said the department will work to identify the suspects involved, and WSB-TV reported police still need the surviving 21-year-old to identify who shot him. In a case at that stage, a neighbor with a doorbell camera pointed at Browns Mill Road or Lindsey Drive is genuinely useful.

If you have video, saw a vehicle, or heard something in that block that afternoon, contact the Atlanta Police Department and give them the date, the time, and your camera’s clock offset if it runs fast or slow. Do not post footage publicly first and then hand it over — give it to investigators.

Attention: do not go looking for the shooter yourself, and do not confront anyone you think matches a rumor. Police have not released a suspect description, which means every description circulating right now is somebody’s guess.

What happens next in this investigation

Three things, in rough order of likelihood.

The 21-year-old talks. WSB-TV reported police need him to identify the shooter and establish a motive. Whether he can or will is the single largest variable in this case.

The vehicle gets traced. Investigators have identified a vehicle involved. Vehicles in Atlanta are traceable through tag readers and camera networks, and that work does not require the victim’s cooperation.

An arrest, or nothing. If charges come, the Atlanta Police Department will name the person charged. If the case goes quiet, there may be no further public statement for a long stretch. No timeline has been given.

This page will be updated when a named agency or a named outlet publishes more. Nothing on it is filled in by inference.

What we don’t know yet

If you or someone in your family was shot

The days right after a shooting are mostly logistics, and the logistics are worse when the person hurt is elderly or when the case is still open.

A few things that are true regardless of this particular case. Georgia has a crime victims compensation program that can apply to medical costs for victims of violent crime, and the hospital’s own social work or victim services staff is usually the fastest door into it — ask at Grady before you leave. Keep the incident number, every officer’s name and badge number, and a dated log of who called you and what they said.

Attention: you are not obligated to give a recorded statement to an insurer, an investigator working for a company, or anyone else who turns up while a family member is still in surgery. Ask who they work for. Ask for it in writing.

Free help exists for exactly this stretch, and it costs nothing to ask a question.

Frequently asked questions

What happened on Browns Mill Road in Atlanta?
An 85-year-old woman was shot while sitting on the porch of her own home, according to FOX 5 Atlanta, near Browns Mill Road Southeast and Lindsey Drive in southeast Atlanta. A 21-year-old man was shot a short distance away. Two people were hurt and no one was killed. Police believe the 21-year-old man was the intended target.

Who was shot in southeast Atlanta?
An 85-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man. Neither FOX 5 Atlanta nor WSB-TV published either person's name, and The Local Alert is not naming them. Both were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Where exactly did the Browns Mill Road shooting happen?
Near Browns Mill Road Southeast and Lindsey Drive, in the Lakewood Heights area of southeast Atlanta, Fulton County. The 85-year-old woman was on Browns Mill Road. WSB-TV reported the 21-year-old man was on Lindsey Drive, one block away; FOX 5 Atlanta described him only as being on a nearby street. No block or house number has been released for either scene.

When did the Browns Mill Road shooting happen?
FOX 5 Atlanta reported it happened Monday afternoon, before 4 p.m. The Monday before publication was Aug. 10, 2026. WSB-TV states no date and no time for the shooting at all, so this page does not blend the two reports together.

Was the 85-year-old woman the intended target?
No. Police believe the 21-year-old man who was shot one block away was the intended target, WSB-TV reported. The woman was on her own porch.

Was anyone killed in the Browns Mill Road shooting?
No. Neither FOX 5 Atlanta nor WSB-TV reports a death. Two people were shot and both were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Has anyone been arrested in the Browns Mill Road shooting?
No arrest is announced in either report. No suspect has been named or described, and no charge has been filed publicly. Anyone eventually charged is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

Are the two shootings connected?
FOX 5 Atlanta reported that investigators believe the two shootings are connected. No source has described the sequence of events, which person was shot first, or how the gunfire crossed the block between the two scenes.

What did Atlanta police say about the shooting?
Atlanta Police Captain Germain Dearlove told WSB-TV: "This was a reckless incident, and the Atlanta Police Department will work tirelessly to identify the suspects involved." That is the only named police quote in either report.

Did police identify a suspect vehicle?
WSB-TV reported that investigators said they identified a vehicle that was involved in the shooting. No make, model, color, year or tag has been released, and no image of it has been published.

How is the 85-year-old woman doing?
She underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and, per FOX 5 Atlanta, remains in good spirits despite her injuries. No further medical detail has been reported, and no condition at all has been reported for the 21-year-old man.

Who is Ethel Turner?
Ethel Turner is a neighbor who was interviewed in WSB-TV's report. She is not the woman who was shot. Neither outlet published the victim's name, and any account that attaches Ethel Turner's name to the 85-year-old victim is wrong.

Why is the woman called the neighborhood "auntie"?
The phrase comes from FOX 5 Atlanta's coverage, where it is presented as what police said she is known as in the neighborhood. It is not a direct quotation from a named officer, and it is not presented as one here.

What hospital were the victims taken to?
Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Both the 85-year-old woman and the 21-year-old man were taken there.

How do I get an Atlanta police report for this incident?
Because this is a shooting rather than a traffic accident, the document is a police incident report from the Atlanta Police Department, not a Georgia State Patrol accident report. Get the incident number first, then request the report from the department. Records tied to an open investigation can be withheld or redacted while the case is active. The Local Alert does not hold copies and cannot request one on your behalf.

How do I give Atlanta police information about this shooting?
Contact the Atlanta Police Department directly. Doorbell and security camera footage from Browns Mill Road or Lindsey Drive that afternoon is the most useful thing a neighbor can provide. Note the date, the time, and whether your camera's clock runs fast or slow. Do not confront anyone yourself, and treat any suspect description that is not attributed to the Atlanta Police Department as unverified.