ATLANTA — Fulton County officials joined law enforcement on Thursday afternoon to update the public on the Piedmont Park stabbing case.
District Attorney Fani Wills, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat, acting United States Attorney Kurt Erskine, and others in law enforcement spoke at the county courthouse around 2 p.m.
Katie Janness and her dog Bowie were brutally stabbed to death inside the park near the 10th Street gate entrance last week.
"Go out in public with several people with you," Willis said during Thursday's press conference. "Behave in a way that is safe."
The district attorney said that's the message she wants people across the county to leave with — urging citizens to travel to the park with a few friends and not alone late at night.
Willis said they called on support due to the time it had been since someone had been murdered at Piedmont Park, the park being a "public treasure" to the city, and the abnormality of the killing not being a shooting.
"We're doing what is necessary to solve this case," Willis said.
Willis said there is no evidence of the "serial killer" rumors at this point. She also said that it is too early to identify this crime as a hate crime.
"But we certainly all ... are hearing those kinds of calls and we hear the fear in a community that is usually safe," she explained.
Earlier this week
During a Tuesday press conference hosted by the Atlanta mayor's office, the city's police chief Rodney Bryant said he had conversations with Fulton County's district attorney about contributing resources to the case.
Bryant also called upon the FBI earlier this month to assist in the investigation to provide "a level of resources" he says the city doesn't have.
"This homicide, this murder was outside the norm of what we would typically see," Bryant said.
Both Bryant and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said the city more often sees violence between individuals who know each other, but the Piedmont Park stabbing was different.
"This was so unique, that I felt that we needed to collaborate with as many resources as we possibly can," Bryant said.
Evidence released since Tuesday
The Atlanta Police Department has since released photographs of multiple people who they believe were in the area of Piedmont Park when a Janness and Bowie were killed.
They say these individuals are not suspects, they simply want to find out if they have any information about the crime or if they may have seen anything.
Janness' life partner, Emma Clark, was the person who called 911 after she found the 40-year-old and her dog in a gruesome scene at the park before sunrise last Wednesday.
"I ran up to her, I tried to feel for a pulse but it was clear that she was gone. I turned around and I just ran out of the park," Clark described. "It was dark, and I didn't know what was going on. I was terrified and shocked. That's when I called the cops immediately."
The killer is still unaccounted for and police have not released any information about a potential suspect.