Man accused in CNN shooting has prior murder conviction

Atlanta police initially had difficulty identifying Arthur Mann, 39, and verifying his background because he was not carrying identification during Tuesday’s shootings.

Before the shootings, a CNN Center security guard approached Mann and Clara Riddles ? who were quarreling ? and ordered him to drop his weapon, according to a report released by the Atlanta Police Department on Thursday. Mann shot Riddles, and the guard then shot Mann, police said.

Mann is accused of killing Riddles, 22, of College Park. Riddles worked at the attached Omni Hotel.

Police said the two had lived together in Fairburn at one point.

Based on statements from the victim’s family, photographs of Mann and other information police have developed, investigators are confident the person they have in custody is the same person listed on the Florida Department of Corrections Web site as having been convicted of a 1991 murder.

“Yes, that’s him,” officer James Polite, an Atlanta police spokesman, said Thursday.

Polite said he was unsure if fingerprints had been taken from Mann, who has been in police custody in an Atlanta hospital since the shootings.

Records show that Mann also served a five-year prison sentence in south Florida after he was convicted of having sex with a minor, who was 16 or 17 according to prison records. At the time, Mann was 30.

Mann first went to prison at 19 in 1986 for stealing a car. He served about a year of an 18-month sentence. About a year and a half later, he stole another car and went back to prison the following year and served about a year and a half of a 3 1/2-year sentence, Florida records show.

Four months after his release on that charge, Mann killed someone while committing a robbery, records show. He was sentenced to 10 years for those crimes, but served only four.

In February 1998, he had sex with a minor, who was 16 or 17 according to prison records. Mann was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in March 2004.

Mann was downgraded to critical condition Thursday at Grady Memorial Hospital, according to Polite. He had been in stable condition on Wednesday.

After he was transported to Grady, Mann was charged with aggravated assault and felony murder, Polite said.