Several weeks after a 38-year-old businessman was shot and killed outside Patten Towers, business owners, residents and stakeholders in and around downtown Chattanooga want to know what officials are doing to keep them safe.
On Tuesday, they voiced their concerns to city leaders and law enforcement officials during a question-and-answer session at the Waterhouse Pavilion, pointing to recent thefts from vehicles, employees feeling unsafe leaving work late at night, people behaving erratically and sleeping or loitering outside their properties, and issues filling ground-floor retail space.
“I want to apologize for it having gotten to this point, but I think Chris Wright’s tragic murder was kind of a boiling point that blew the lid off things for obvious reasons for a lot of us,” Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly told several dozen downtown stakeholders and business leaders during the hour-long meeting. “But it’s not as though we’ve been asleep at the switch. We are open to suggestion … about how we can better communicate and problem solve with this.”
(READ MORE: Suspect in fatal downtown Chattanooga shooting had long criminal history)
