By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Atlanta police arrested three young men and charged them with murder in a high-profile shooting in the Virginia-Highland area.
The men also were charged in a rape and home invasion that occurred in Grant Park a few hours after the shooting, and police suspect they could be linked to more than 20 other crimes.
Tamario Wise, 18, and two others are charged with murder and armed robbery in the killing of Charles Boyer on Nov. 22.
Boyer, 39, was shot several times in a struggle with a gunman just moments after Boyer and his girlfriend got out of a car at her Virginia-Highland apartment complex.
Police declined to name the other two men in custody in connection with Boyer’s killing because of a related ongoing investigation.
Two other men also are in custody on suspicion that they participated in crimes with Wise or the two other men charged in Boyer’s death.
“Make no mistake,” Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said at a news conference with Mayor Kasim Reed and top investigators crowded around him. “We have removed some very dangerous criminals from the streets of Atlanta.”
Boyer’s mother, Ann Boyer, declined to comment when contacted Wednesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Maj. Keith Meadows, who is the Atlanta Police Department’s head of major crimes, said the three men charged in Boyer’s death were not linked to a particular gang but were part of a loose group of individuals who knew each other from the Amal Heights neighborhood, which is between I-75 and the Lakewood region in south Atlanta. They are suspected in similar crimes, Meadows said.
Most of those crimes involved home invasions, pedestrian robberies or carjackings. Police declined to provide details because of the continuing investigation. But the first crime most likely occurred Aug. 18, and the series continued until Wise was arrested Nov. 27.
“Wise was possibly the ringleader,” Meadows said.
“He would go to the labor pool of criminals” looking for partners to help him with the crime of the day, Turner said.
“These incidents shook our city, stoking fears even as actual crime numbers dropped,” Turner said.
Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored SUV speed away from the Boyer shooting and other neighborhood shootings.
A surveillance camera at a convenience store captured images of three men putting gas in a Toyota Highlander that resembled witnesses’ descriptions. Police said Wise was the man with a “Mohawk haircut.” There was a second man wearing a bright pink shirt who also was clearly seen on the video.
On Nov. 26, a Highlander was found in the parking lot at MARTA’s Lakewood station; it had been reported stolen from Greenview Avenue.
Four days earlier, Boyer and his girlfriend, Lisa McGraw, were getting out of a car at her apartment complex around 10 p.m. when, she told police, she felt a gun pressed to her head. Two or three masked men then asked her to give up her apartment keys and walk to her apartment. They walked a bit before McGraw ran to seek help. She later told police that she heard gunshots as she ran.
Police found Boyer dead in front of one of the apartment buildings.
Later that night, and five miles away, a man reported that three men accosted him moments after he, his wife and their daughter returned from grocery shopping. The woman and girl were already inside the house on Underwood Avenue in Grant Park when three men pulled up in a dark SUV.
The three demanded to be let inside, but the man refused. The would-be intruders shot at the man but missed.
There was another incident that night. A man reported he was walking in the 600 block of Home Avenue when three men in a dark SUV pulled up and robbed him.
Several hours later, past midnight, a home invasion and rape were reported on Boulevard.
Wise and the other two charged in Boyer’s death also are charged with the Nov. 23 home invasion, but not the two shootings that came in the hours after the Boyer shooting.
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution