A 22-year-old man was shot early Sunday morning while standing outside near 98 William Holmes Borders Drive NE in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn neighborhood, and police have not identified or captured the shooter. Officers responded to a person-shot call at 3:53 a.m. and found the man with a gunshot wound. He was alert, conscious and breathing when paramedics loaded him into an ambulance and took him to the hospital.
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, an unknown person approached the man as he stood outside and opened fire before fleeing. Investigators are still working to determine what led up to the shooting, and the motive remains unclear. Authorities have not released the victim's identity, and it is not yet known whether his condition has changed since he was taken to the hospital.
A Park Named for a Civil Rights Pastor
The address where the shooting happened is home to Selena S. Butler Park and Recreation Center, a City of Atlanta municipal facility that has served as an official cooling center and emergency shelter, according to reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The street itself carries historical weight: it was named for the Rev. William Holmes Borders, a civil rights leader who pastored Wheat Street Baptist Church for more than 50 years and successfully petitioned city leaders in the 1940s to hire Atlanta's first Black police officers, per the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
The stretch of road falls within the Atlanta Police Department's Zone 6 precinct, which covers more than 20 east Atlanta neighborhoods including Sweet Auburn and Old Fourth Ward, according to the Virginia-Highland Security Patrol. That command area has seen its share of gunfire tied to this specific street over the years.
A Street With a Troubled Recent History
William Holmes Borders Drive has been the scene of repeated violence in the past several years. In October 2020, a 33-year-old man was shot multiple times on the block after he confronted a group breaking into his vehicle, 11Alive reported at the time. A May 2021 early-morning shooting off nearby Edgewood Avenue left one man dead and another critically injured, triggering a homicide investigation.
The following month, in June 2021, a triple shooting on the same street hospitalized three people, coming just weeks after a 26-year-old man was killed in a drive-by shooting nearby, FOX 5 Atlanta reported. More recently, in December 2024, police investigated another shooting on the street after an impaired driver crashed his vehicle in Sweet Auburn and was shot by an unknown gunman.
Citywide Numbers Show a Different Trend
Sunday's shooting comes even as citywide crime statistics have trended downward. Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum reported that overall crime across the city dropped 7% in 2025, continuing a multi-year decline in major offenses, according to the Atlanta Police Department. Mid-year 2025 metrics from the Atlanta Police Foundation showed shootings citywide down 21% and homicides down 30% compared to the same period the previous year, with officials crediting targeted interdiction efforts and staffing changes for the improvement.
Still, no arrest has been made in Sunday's shooting, and police have not said whether they have identified a suspect. If a shooter is eventually caught, Georgia law classifies assaulting someone with a firearm as felony aggravated assault, which carries a sentencing range of one to 20 years in state prison, according to Georgia Code cited by FindLaw. For now, the identity of the gunman, the motive behind the attack, and the victim's current condition all remain open questions in an investigation that is still in its earliest hours.
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