TUCKER, Ga. – DeKalb County Police were involved in a shootout with a trio of carjacking suspects early Thursday morning.
Around 1 a.m., the gunfire rang out in a strip mall parking lot on Northlake Parkway, just across the street from Northlake Mall. Investigators say this all began hours earlier when a Toyota was carjacked from a nearby apartment complex.
Two officers spotted the stolen Toyota and tried to get it to pull over. That led to a short chase, which ended near the Northlake Parkway/Henderson Mill interchange. Three suspects bailed out of the car and took off on foot, with the officers in hot pursuit.
Detectives tell us one of the suspected carjackers then started shooting at the officer, who returned fire. So many rounds were fired that it took hours for crime scene techs to count the shell casings, but it appears no one was hit in the hail of bullets.
Police caught one suspect, the other two escaped. Investigators launched a large manhunt in the area with a number of streets blocked off during the search. A helicopter searched in the air, while police dogs tried to track down the remaining suspects. But at least for now they got away.
