ATLANTA-- At two o'clock Saturday morning, three young men were shot to death inside a house in southeast Atlanta.
It was a night of horror for the neighborhood and next of kin --- and it drove the city into grim territory in its crime stats. Those three killings, and another one Thursday – gave Atlanta 90 homicides for the year – making 2014 the city's deadliest year since 2010, when there were 93 homicides.
With three weeks left in the year, police are bracing for an even higher total by year's end.
It's an anomaly in a city that has seen its overall rate of street crime drop over the last decade. Atlanta police boast that since 2009, crime has dropped 18 percent—and expect another overall drop this year, despite the spike in homicides.
Atlanta police would not make anyone available for comment Friday.
