The husband of a Georgia assistant attorney general was found shot to death in a car in northeast Atlanta early Wednesday, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
Officers received a call about 1 a.m. Wednesday about someone shot at the intersection of Rankin Street and Boulevard, Atlanta police said.
A witness told officers he became suspicious when the driver didn’t drive off at the green light and went to see if he was OK.
That’s when he found blood inside the car and noticed the driver, later identified as 34-year-old Shahriar Zolfaghari of Mableton, had been shot. Zolfaghari is the husband of Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright, said Betty Honey, an investigator with the medical examiner’s office.
Police said Zolfaghari had been shot twice while on duty as a Lyft driver. Crime scene investigators found two shell casings at the scene.
“It looks like someone must have either been in the vehicle with him or shot him at close range,” police Maj. Adam Lee III told Channel 2 Action News.
Police subpoenaed Zolfaghari’s Lyft fare records to locate any rides he had before the shooting. Lee said he didn’t know if Zolfaghari had a job outside of Lyft.
“It’s a mystery as to why someone would harm him,” Lee said at a press conference on the shooting.
Attorney General Sam Olens appointed Zolfaghari’s wife as Georgia’s statewide prosecutor for human trafficking in October 2014. Before that, Wright spent three years overseeing the Fulton County Human Trafficking Unit, which she established during her time with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
In Fulton, Wright secured convictions and guilty pleas for 19 traffickers, including two life sentences.
“We at the Attorney General’s office are heartbroken by the tragic loss of Camila’s husband,” Olens’ spokesman Nicholas Genesi said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.”
