Atlanta City Council member Antonio Brown had his car stolen and was assaulted by thieves earlier this afternoon. Brown, who recently announced a bid for Mayor of Atlanta, was meeting with a community leader, Ben Norman, when the incident took place.
The robbery took place in broad daylight in Atlanta’s Dixie Hills neighborhood. Brown had stopped to talk with Norman and was standing just a few feet away from his white Mercedes coupe when it was stolen. He described the thieves as very young, around 11 or 12 years-old.
“We tried to go there and maybe try to get the kid out of the car. So, I’m like, what do you do to a kid, right?” Ben Norman said to Fox 5 Atlanta. “He had already starting figuring out…I mean they had plans, they knew what they were going to do. He hit the gas and he pulled out, peeled out, and took off.”
Brown told reporters that he tried to stop them and was dragged for about half a block. “As he started to speed up, and I knew that if I had not let go, I knew I probably could have killed myself because he was going so fast, I would have started to tumble. And I would have hurt him,” Brown said.
Antonio Brown was a leading voice in support of reallocating a third of the Atlanta Police Department’s budget towards social services last August. The proposal was ultimately not adopted despite vocal support.
Despite this latest incident, Brown has stood by his platform and is still in favor of diverting funds away from the Atlanta Police Department. “The reality is this: We need programmatic initiatives in place to help support these kids to be able to give them another pathway instead of them of them committing crimes,” said Brown.
The councilman did file a police report and was notified that his car had been found. No arrests have been made, but Brown has stated that he has no desire to press charges anyway.
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