A South Fulton family is scrambling to find a new place to live after gunmen sprayed their Sable Glen Road home with dozens of bullets, one of which struck just above their 2-month-old son's bassinet. Police recovered at least 40 shell casings at the scene and believe at least two guns were fired at the house.
Nelio Matute told WSB-TV he heard a lot of noise while he and his wife were in bed. Bullets grazed him as the gunfire tore through the house, and the shooting happened around the time his wife would normally have been sewing dresses for church. Their two-month-old son was in his bassinet when a bullet hole was found just above it, narrowly missing the infant.
Matute said the people responsible did not care about life. “They tried to kill people because people were inside the house,” he said, according to the station's report. Cars parked outside the home were left undamaged, even as the house itself absorbed dozens of rounds.
Family Won't Spend Another Night in the House
Matute said the family will not spend another night at the home because they do not know who did it or why. They are now searching for somewhere else to live while investigators continue looking for the shooters, per the same account. No motive has been confirmed, and it remains unclear whether the home was deliberately targeted or hit by mistake.
The scale of gunfire found at the scene, at least 40 shell casings from multiple weapons, mirrors other recent multi-round attacks on occupied structures in South Fulton. In April, 11Alive reported that police arrested two men accused of firing a 9mm handgun equipped with an automatic conversion switch into an occupied business on Old National Highway, a device capable of turning a semi-automatic weapon into one that fires dozens of rounds in seconds.
Georgia Law and a Stalled Legislative Fix
Under Georgia law, firing gunshots into an occupied dwelling can constitute felony aggravated assault and first-degree criminal damage to property, offenses carrying prison terms of one to 20 years, according to Justia Law. Georgia courts have held that shooting into an occupied residence endangers human life regardless of whether anyone is struck.
State lawmakers tried to address attacks like this one directly. During the 2023-2024 legislative session, Georgia introduced House Bill 446 to create a specific felony offense for drive-by shootings and stiffen penalties for discharging firearms into occupied homes or vehicles, according to BillTrack50. The bill passed committee but stalled, leaving drive-by attacks to be prosecuted under general aggravated assault statutes.
A Subdivision With a Violent History
Sable Glen is an established subdivision off Buffington Road in South Fulton's 30349 zip code, built largely in the early 2000s and featuring single-family homes, townhomes, a community pool and tennis courts, according to real estate records from Movoto. It is not the neighborhood's first brush with gun violence: in December 2011, a homeowner on Sable Bay Point within the same subdivision was shot multiple times during a home invasion, as reported at the time by WSB-TV.
South Fulton's police department has weathered its own upheaval in recent months. In January, the department began the retirement process for founding Chief Keith Meadows following an independent investigation into departmental operations and pending lawsuits, per 11Alive. The department has patrolled the city since it replaced Fulton County police in March 2018, following South Fulton's 2017 incorporation.
Violent Crime Trends Amid the Investigation
Citywide, violent crime actually dropped 25.8% in 2024 compared to the year before, with 529 violent crimes recorded including 411 aggravated assaults and 25 homicides, according to municipal crime data compiled by OpenCrime. Even so, aggravated assaults, the category this shooting would likely fall under, continue to make up the vast majority of violent crime incidents logged in the city's weekly police summaries.
Fulton County prosecutors and South Fulton police have also been working to clear a backlog of unsolved violent crime through a joint cold-case task force, which Hoodline reported had solved six of 26 open homicide cases from June 2021 to October 2025 as of this month. For now, investigators are still searching for whoever fired the shots that ripped through the Matute family's home, and the family is left trying to find somewhere safer to sleep.
