A 35-year-old man was shot at the Tokyo Valentino adult store off Cheshire Bridge Road on Saturday, and Atlanta police say he is expected to survive after being taken to a hospital. Officers responding to the scene found the man suffering from a gunshot wound, and investigators believe he had been in a fight with someone he knew that escalated into gunfire. No arrests have been made and police have not released suspect information.
The shooting, first reported by Atlanta News First, remains a developing investigation, with no further details yet on what sparked the dispute between the victim and the person police believe he knew. The 24-hour store at 1739 Cheshire Bridge Road has operated around the clock since the chain was founded in 1995, according to Tokyo Valentino, which advertises extensive on-site security at its flagship location.
A Store With a Violent History
Saturday’s shooting is far from the first time gunfire has erupted at or near this particular Tokyo Valentino. In December 2022, a woman was shot and injured outside the store after a dispute with two men escalated into gunfire — a confrontation that began after she used pepper spray on the men during an earlier argument, and ended when they returned and opened fire on her vehicle. And in March 2021, a customer who had been banned from the store came back and opened fire on a security guard who told him to leave, though the guard escaped uninjured that time.
The broader Cheshire Bridge Road corridor has also seen serious violence well beyond this one storefront. In February, Atlanta police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were locked in an hours-long SWAT standoff on the 2400 block after officers responding to a shots-fired call were ambushed with gunfire, leaving two officers injured; the suspect in that case was ultimately charged with eight counts of aggravated assault on law enforcement, as Hoodline reported at the time.
Years of Legal Fights With the City
Tokyo Valentino has also been fighting the City of Atlanta in court and before regulators for years. In October 2023, the city issued a cease-and-desist order accusing the store of illegally operating an adult business and permitting sexual activity on the premises, citing video evidence of customers engaging in sexual acts in the parking lot, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The store appealed that order before the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustments in February 2024, but the appeal was unsuccessful.
The legal friction goes back further still. The store’s corporate operating entity, Cheshire Bridge Holdings LLC, sued the City of Atlanta in 2015 over the constitutionality of the city’s adult business zoning definitions, a fight that eventually reached the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, per Law of the Land. The city countered in that litigation that the store had operated in violation of its permit since it opened.
Neighbors have also organized against the store’s ownership. In April 2023, the Piedmont Heights and Morningside-Lenox Park neighborhood associations formally petitioned against a zoning request from Tokyo Valentino’s owner to build a bathhouse nearby, gathering nearly 2,000 signatures over public safety and crime concerns, according to WABE.
A Regional Crackdown on Adult Businesses
Saturday’s shooting lands amid a wider regional push to tighten regulation of adult businesses over safety concerns. Just days earlier, DeKalb County commissioners voted to update local adult establishment regulations to ban adult novelty stores from commercial zones entirely, with officials citing documented secondary effects including violent crime, the same WABE report notes.
If a suspect is eventually identified in Saturday’s shooting, Georgia law sets a firm framework for potential charges. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon is a felony carrying a prison sentence of one to 20 years, and possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony against another person is a separate charge carrying a mandatory five-year sentence that must run consecutively, according to Justia Law. For now, no arrests have been announced, and Atlanta police have not released any suspect information as the investigation continues.
