Atlanta, GA
How an Atlanta police officer was able to convince knife-wielding woman not to harm herself
Officer seen on camera calming woman in crisis
She was along the Chattahoochee River, holding a knife to her chest. That is where Atlanta Police Officer Harding stepped in. What happened next will be studied by other officers for years.
ATLANTA – Atlanta police released video on Friday of one of their officers successfully talking a woman down from hurting herself, as she had a knife pressed against her own chest.
“Put the knife down for me and grab my hand,” APD Officer Harding can be heard saying on his bodycam video.
He was trying desperately to talk a woman down from hurting herself as she holds a knife against her chest, seemingly ready to stab herself.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself, you’re precious, you’re a precious human being,” Officer Harding tells the woman on the video.
On June 27, Officer Harding responded to the call of a missing woman being spotted at around 11:30 a.m. at an address along Paces Ferry Road.
She had been reported missing by her family only an hour before.
Once he encounters the woman sitting along the Chattahoochee River, he immediately tries to make her feel safe.
“I’m serious, there’s too many people that love you. I’m here to help you,” he says to her.
“I was so impressed and so moved by watching this officer have such compassion for this woman who was clearly in incredible pain,” said Atlanta psychotherapist Laura Morse after she watched the video.
She says the way Officer Harding starts the encounter with the woman was key.
“He chose to engage her personally, to let her know that he saw her, that he knew that she was in trouble, that he cared about her,” Morse said.
At one point, Harding says to her, “God loves you, we love you.”
Later, Harding sits down in front of her before continuing to talk to her, essentially slowing down the whole interaction.
“He provided hope for her, and he was patient. He waited for her to come around instead of forcing an agenda or charging her,” said Cori Ross, LCSW.
Ross says the officer’s patient approach not only calmed the woman down, but also allowed him to act calmly.
“So, by slowing it down, he creates calm in his body, he’s able to access his rational brain, get in touch with the situation, not feel threatened,” Ross said.
These two experts say his approach is what eventually allowed Harding to get her to surrender the knife and climb off the riverbank.
“Can I have the knife? Let me have the knife. Let me have it, thank you!” he says to her as she hands him the large knife.
Even after making her safe, Harding continues to reassure her.
At one point she calls herself “a failure.” However, Harding reassures her and tells her “God doesn’t make failures.”
Eventually he gets her to paramedics and mental health clinicians who are standing by.
“It is everything that you hope an interaction would be when it’s regarding mental illness or mental health issues,” Morse said.
Officer Harding has been with APD since 2009.
The Department says what he did relates to their de-escalation training, which officers have to complete annually.
Both Morse and Ross say they hope law enforcement agencies will learn from this interaction.
The Portland Fire capitalized on Atlanta’s cold shooting and defensive lapses Saturday night, defeating the Dream 102-92 and handing Atlanta its sixth loss in the past seven games.
The Dream played without All-Star forward Angel Reese, who was ruled out before tipoff with a right leg injury after turning her right ankle during Thursday’s win over the Seattle Storm. Reese had been listed as questionable entering the game before Atlanta announced she would not play. Rookie center Madina Okot made the start in her place and responded with a career-high 19 points.
All five Dream starters scored in double figures. Allisha Gray led Atlanta with 20 points, Naz Hillmon added 15, and Jordin Canada recorded her fifth double-double of the season with 10 points and 12 assists. Canada now leads all WNBA guards in double-doubles this season. Rhyne Howard finished with 10 points and four steals.
The difference came from beyond the arc.
Atlanta shot just 23% from 3-point range, while Portland consistently punished defensive breakdowns, tying its season-high with 14 three-pointers on 29 attempts.
“We got good looks,” Hillmon said. “We just have to knock them down.”
The Dream trailed 51-44 at halftime after Portland exploited defensive miscommunication on pick-and-pop actions to create open looks. Atlanta cut the deficit to 88-81 midway through the fourth quarter, but Portland answered every push with back-to-back baskets to put the game away.
“Anytime we miscommunicated, anytime we over-helped, they found their open shooters or their rollers,” Hillmon said.
Head coach Karl Smesko said the Dream generated enough quality opportunities but couldn’t overcome their shooting struggles.
“We made defensive mistakes, they made us pay for them, and we couldn’t keep up with as well as they were shooting the ball,” Smesko said. “We had three or four miscommunications on some of those pick-and-pops. We had two people go with one, and they just have too many good shooters for that.”
Atlanta’s offensive process, Smesko said, wasn’t the problem.
“We’re winning possessions by a margin that you would probably win 95% of those games, but not if your effective field goal percentage is going to be what ours is,” he said.
The Fire won with a balanced scoring attack. Megan Gustafson led the team with 17 points, Serah Williams added 15 off the bench, Emily Engstler finished with 14 points and 11 rebounds for a double-double, Carla Leite had 13 points and 10 assists, and Bridget Carleton scored 12 points while knocking down four 3-pointers. Teja Oblak chipped in nine points, including several key baskets in the fourth quarter that helped put the game away.
Atlanta drops to 13-10 with the loss and will look to regroup in its next game against the Los Angeles Sparks before the All-Star break.
Atlanta, GA
Man Blames Diet Drug After Gunning Down Police Officer and New Dad at Point Blank Range | Oxygen
Fulton County Police Officer Aaron Blount—a new father, fiancé and committed community volunteer—was nearing the end of his shift when he spotted a car driving erratically and decided to intervene.
Minutes later, the 26-year-old would be dead.
His tragic fate wouldn’t be discovered until just after 10 p.m. on April 22, 2003 when fellow Fulton County Police Officer Reginald McCain stumbled on an unsettling scene while patrolling his beat in Georgia’s South Fulton County.
“I’ll never forget what I saw that night and what I discovered when I approached that car,” McCain recalled in the season four premiere of Oxygen’s The Real Murders of Atlanta. “I saw a police car with the blue lights on in the distance. This car’s off the roadway into a brushy area near some railroad tracks.”
After discovering the car belonged to Blount—his adjacet beat partner and friend—McCain walked up to the vehicle and found the windows had been shot out and discovered Blount slumped over in the vehicle with his gun still clutched in his hand. The officer had been shot multiple times in the body and head.
In the days that would follow, investigators set out to recreate Blount’s final movements, ultimately leading them to a suspect with no prior criminal record who deployed an unconventional defense.
Who Was Aaron Blount?
Blount grew up less than a mile from where he died and was committed to giving back to his community, whether it was through his work as a police officer or coaching and mentoring younger kids on the basketball court.
“Aaron definitely was a community guy,” his fiancée Nicole Manns recalled, “and that was important to him to kind of give back to where he grew up.”
Blount—a one-time student at the Naval Academy—was also eager to make a difference in the life of his own 13-month-old son, A.J., whom he shared with Manns.
As she explained, “He was an amazing father.”
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What Happened to Aaron Blount?
On the evening of April 22, Manns was waiting for Blount to get off work.
“I knew he would be coming home soon and I called him and he said, ‘I’m on my way home,’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Hey, this guy is driving crazy in front of me, I’m going to call you back.’”
It would be the last time she ever spoke with her fiancé.
Later that night, McCain made the grisly discovery along the roadway and called for backup. Former Fulton County Police Officer Charles Cook—the squad’s medic—was one of the first to arrive.
“Aaron was covered in blood on his head,” Cook recalled. “He had what appeared to be a bullet in the back of his shoulder and shirt. This is when I noticed Aaron had his gun out [and] had his finger on the trigger.”
Though he was rushed to Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital, Blount did not survive.
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“I just broke down and I started crying,” former Fulton County Police homicide detective Glenn Kalish remembered of hearing the news. “Not just for Aaron and the rest of the Fulton County Police Department, but I felt a lot of personal pressure on me being assigned this case and the weight of the case.”
Investigators Piece Together Final Moments of Aaron Blount’s Life
As detectives began to their investigation, they learned that there had been multiple 911 calls that night about a silver vehicle driving erratically not far from the murder scene.
They were also surprised to discover a handgun laying on the ground in the parking lot of a gas station, just across the road from where Blount’s vehicle had come to rest.
They came to believe that Blount had been following a car down the roadway when the driver hopped out at the gas station and waited for Blount to come around the corner, then fired directly into his vehicle, before setting the weapon down and fleeing the scene.
Injured, Blount likely took his foot off the brake, causing the patrol car to roll across Roosevelt Highway into the grassy area by the train tracks.
An eyewitness who had been driving by the gas station also came forward to share what he knew about the fatal shooting.
“We see the police got his lights on at the gas station,” the witness told police. “And as I was approaching the light, I heard a gunshot. And I saw a guy standing…at point blank range shooting through the window.”
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According to his account, the shooter then turned and calmly walked away before getting into a silver Ford Focus.
He described the shooter as a larger Black male, around 6’2” tall and around 250 pounds or more.
Though the medical examiner was able to connect the weapon found at the scene to the bullets in Blount’s patrol car and body, a second gun had been used to deliver the shots to his head, leading investigators to believe the cold-blooded killer had used two separate weapons.
Kenneth G. Reese Emerges As Suspect in Aaron Blount’s Death
Investigators caught another break in the case when they learned the weapon that had been recovered at the scene was registered to Kenneth Reese.
Though authorities initially believed the weapon was linked to a fire department captain and arson investigator with a stellar reputation—sending shockwaves through the law enforcement community—they learned after speaking with Kenneth that he had a younger nephew with the same name, who often went by the nickname “Little Kenny.”
Little Kenny had no criminal record, but did own at least one firearm. Even more telling, investigators were able to link him to a silver Ford Focus rental car. Yet, according to Little Kenny’s family, he had gone to Florida and now appeared to be on the run.
“He came from a good family,” former homicide detective Melvin Dean said. “A real solid family in the community.”
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Little Kenny’s grandmother was the first Black woman to own a gospel television network and his father was a professional wrestler turned celebrated minister. But when Little Kenny lost his father just one year before Blount’s death, those close to him say his life began to fall apart.
“His father’s death was such an impact on him,” a family spokesperson shared. “He was grieving so bad that he could not handle coming to his father’s funeral.”
According to the spokesperson, Little Kenny started carrying a gun and began showing signs of paranoia, believing that someone may be following him.
Who Killed Police Officer Aaron Blount?
Five days after Blount’s murder, Little Kenny was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals at a bus station in Miami and was charged with first-degree murder.
The district attorney announced that he was planning to seek the death penalty, but before the case could go to trial, his defense team came forward with evidence that he had been taking the diet drug ephedra—later banned by the FDA—which they argued had impaired his mental state.
After state psychiatrists also concluded that Little Kenny may have been suffering from drug-related psychosis at the time of the shooting, prosecutors decided to offer him a plea deal.
In exchange for removing the death penalty, Little Kenny agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Blount’s family—including Manns and his now adult-son A.J.—continue to keep his memory alive.
“I want the people in Atlanta to remember that he protected his community. He protected his family,” Manns said. “He was just…a really good guy, a great dad, a great partner, a great friend, and I think they would be proud and should continue to be proud of him.”
NASCAR O’Reilly Series qualifying results from EchoPark Speedway
Later today, NASCAR O’Reilly Series drivers take the green flag. Now, teams are rolling to the track for qualifying at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta.
View the Atlanta starting lineup for the NASCAR O’Reilly Series below.
Atlanta/Lime Rock Menu
ARCA: Race
Truck: Prac/Qual
O’Reilly: Qual
Atlanta/Lime Rock TV Schedule
The fields makes one lap in the opening round of qualifying. The top 10 from round one advance into round 2 and make another run for the pole position.
Atlanta Qualifying Results (Top 10 – Round 1) : 1. Carson Kvapil 31.987 2. Sam Mayer 32.035 3. Sammy Smith 32.117 4. Jesse Love 32.128 5. William Sawalich 32.171 6. Taylor Gray 32.218 7. Sheldon Creed 32.224 8. Rajah Caruth 32.238 9. Patrick Staropoli 32.224 10. Brent Crews 32.279
Sam Mayer will start from the pole position. He turned a laptime at 31.994 seconds in the second round of qualifying.
EchoPark Speedway
Starting Lineup
July 11, 2026
NASCAR O’Reilly Series
Pos | Driver
1. Sam Mayer
31.994
2. Carson Kvapil
31.978
3. Jesse Love
32.020
4. William Sawalich
32.106
5. Sammy Smith
32.119
6. Sheldon Creed
32.136
7. Brent Crews
32.155
8. Rajah Caruth
32.194
9. Taylor Gray
32.200
10. Patrick Staropoli
32.302
— Failed to advance into Round 2 —
11. Austin Hill
32.286
12. Brandon Jones
32.315
13. Corey Day
32.327
14. Jeremy Clements
32.335
15. Jake Finch
32.336
16. Justin Allgaier
32.379
17. Anthony Alfredo
32.393
18. Nick Sanchez
32.400
19. Ryan Sieg
32.429
20. Kyle Sieg
32.459
21. Jeb Burton
32.545
22. Parker Retzlaff
32.547
23. Dean Thompson
32.573
24. Leland Honeyman Jr
32.583
25. Harrison Burton
32.619
26. Garrett Smithley
32.709
27. Ryan Ellis
32.778
28. Mason Maggio
32.783
29. Nick Leitz
32.857
30. Brennan Poole
32.862
31. Glen Reen
32.884
32. Lavar Scott
32.942
33. Joey Gase
32.946
34. Josh Bilicki
33.035
35. Logan Bearden
33.619
36. Carson Ware
36.110
37. Blaine Perkins
46.808
38. Jordan Anderson
No Time
Links
Atlanta Motor Speedway | Lime Rock Park | NASCAR
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