DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — As a gunman ran between the CDC and the Emory Campus late Friday afternoon, Hayes Parsa, 17, got the emergency alert on his phone saying, “run, hide, fight.”
He was at Emory University Hospital.
“They came over the PA and were like the whole building is on lockdown,” Parsa said.
He told Channel 2’s Cory James that he quickly ran over to a breezeway and took shelter. That’s when he looked outside.
[PHOTOS: Active shooter reported at Emory University]
“When I got to the window, they had a few police officers, kept doing chest compression. I just said a quick prayer,” Parsa said.
Parsa said medical staff ran out and rushed an officer inside and watched the frantic moments that unfolded.
“The bed … a bunch of help on top. And they took him into the surgery room,” Parsa said. “It was so sad. So, so, sad.”
What he would find out later is that officer who was shot was DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, and he lost his life in the line of duty.
“This officer responded to the call as he was trained to do,” interim DeKalb County Police Chief Greg Padrick said.
“This evening, there is a wife without a husband, there are three children, one unborn, without a father,” DeKalb County CEO Loraine Cochran-Johnson said during a news conference Friday night.
Earlier in the evening, police found the suspected shooter, shot on the second floor of a CVS pharmacy nearby. It remains unclear if he was shot by someone else or if he shot himself.
Police have not identified the shooter.
Rose started with the DeKalb County Police Department in September 2024. He leaves behind a wife and two children, with one more on the way.
