A bar altercation in Roswell turned nearly deadly when police shot a man armed with a gun early Saturday morning inside Mazzy's Sports Bar and Grill. As reported by FOX 5 Atlanta, authorities received emergency calls around 1 a.m. from distressed patrons and employees claiming an "unruly" patron was indiscriminately brandishing a firearm at the establishment located on Alpharetta Highway.
Upon arrival, officers encountered 34-year-old Martin Candelas Ponce inside the front entrance of the bar with gun in hand, he ignored repeated orders to drop his weapon and instead raised it towards the officers, prompting one officer to respond with gunfire, leaving Ponce critically wounded and transported to a local hospital where his condition remains undetermined, no police officers were harmed during the incident which took place on March 23.
The Roswell Police Department has taken the step of requesting the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into the shooting, a protocol that follows such occurrences involving law enforcement officers. Further details surrounding the confrontation and subsequent shooting at Mazzy's Sports Bar await release from the bureau's office all as part of a night that saw metro Atlanta police involved in three separate shootings, a fact that underscores the tense climate law enforcement finds itself in.
In a brief from 11Alive, officers not only neutralized the immediate threat posed by Ponce but also provided medical assistance before his transport for hospital care, as the standard procedural aftermath takes its course an investigation helmed by the GBI is expected to bring forth additional context to the volatile episode in Roswell.
