A woman was robbed at gunpoint in a parking area of Buckhead’s Lenox Square April 13 in the latest incident of violent crime that has dogged the luxury mall for over a year.
According to an Atlanta Police Department report, the incident happened around 4:28 p.m. at the 3393 Peachtree Road mall. Before entering the mall, the victim realized she forgot a mask and began walking back to her vehicle. A blue Hyundai Sonata with an Alabama license plate number 1DN9648 approached her “at a rapid speed,” according to the report, and a Black male around 6-feet-3-inches tall got out of the passenger seat and demanded her purse. The woman refused and struggled with the robber, who threw her to the ground, causing scrapes and scratches to her wrist. The robber then pointed a handgun at the victim and she gave him the purse.
The robber entered the Hyundai, which left the area. According to the report, the purse contained $580 in cash, “roughly 12-15 financial cards” and the victim’s driver’s license and Social Security card.
Lenox Square has been among the local hot spots of rising gun violence as a national crime wave has come to Atlanta as well. The mall last year took extraordinary anti-crime measures, including the use of metal detectors, gun-sniffing dogs and a security camera system with software that is claimed to automatically recognize firearms.
Security cameras are a key part of recent safety improvement plans by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and by a group of Buckhead business organizations that includes representation from Lenox Square’s management. Lenox Square has a large number of cameras and has been touted as among the most surveilled parts of the city.
However, the April 13 robbery is the latest incident at Lenox Square where the many cameras did not deter a crime and also did not record the incident. “All cameras in the area of the incident did not capture any footage of the incident,” said the APD report. Another kind of camera that automatically reads license plates spotted the suspect vehicle at Peachtree and Lenox roads just outside the mall, the report said, but the vehicle was not tracked further.