Georgia police appealing to public for help solving road-rage killing
Georgia police are seeking the public's help to solve the slaying of a Chinese American woman who might have been the unintended victim of a road-rage attack near Atlanta about a month ago.
Carmen Lee, 25, had dinner with her parents on May 29 and was driving home when she was struck by gunfire on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Doraville, authorities said.
Lee's car came to a stop on Peachtree near Tilly Mill Road and her family said police have told them she was the unintended victim of a road-rage shooting about one mile away near Winters Chapel Road.
That stretch of road has transportation department video cameras but they're not recorded, police said.
“We’ve made a plea for people in the area who might have seen something," a detective working the case told NBC News on Monday. "It was Memorial Day Weekend, so you’d think it would be a memorable weekend to jog their memory. But it’s yielded nothing of relevance yet."
The 50-year-old driver of another car, struck with gunfire near near Winters Chapel Road, has told investigators he recalls changing lanes and another vehicle swerving around him. However, he's not sure if that swerving vehicle is where the gunfire came from.
"Everybody is kind of frustrated by it," the detective said of Lee's killing. "An innocent person has been shot and killed. We don’t have any cameras, we don’t have any eye witnesses, nothing to start working with."
The victim's family said they agree with investigators that race does not appear to be a motive in this attack.
Lee, who worked in private equity management, was the Duluth, Georgia-born daughter of Chinese immigrants from Malaysia.
"Me and my family see it was just wrong place, wrong time," said the victim's brother Alvin Lee, an 18-year-old college sophomore. "The shooter was definitely shooting at somebody else. She just happened to get caught in the misfire."
Lee thanked all of Carmen's friends and extended family for rallying to the side of his family during this troubling time.
Even before the tragic events of May 29, Lee said he'd been paying more attention to a spike violent crimes that seemed to coincide with the misery brought on my last year's pandemic.
"It's crazy," Lee said. "We're in a state that we are not going to recover from if we keep letting this happen. I believe hate, in general across America, has increased by a lot."
