UPDATE: Steve reports in the comments that news orgs are now reporting that the armored car driver has died.

North Druid Hills Patch is reporting that an armed robber shot and critically injured an armored car driver at the Toco Hills Shopping Center early this afternoon.  Patch’s Jonathan Cribbs reports that the robber “shot several times without warning at the armored car parked in front of the Kroger grocery store at 2205 Lavista Road at about noon”.  The amount of money taken from the armored car has not been disclosed.

The report notes that this is the seventh in a recent string of armored car robberies around Atlanta.

The AJC’s write-up about the incident says that the gunman jumped into a waiting car and that Kroger’s surveillance cameras captured the whole event.

The Champion’s Jonathan Cribbs has a great story in this week’s paper about the unique way the Decatur Book Festival feeds its ravenous authors.

Instead of keeping them locked up in giant communal cages and throwing large hunks of meat at them twice a day – as I’ve heard is done at those other book festivals – the DBF distributes special gift cards that are redeemable at upwards of 40 Decatur restaurants.

Each visiting author is given five cards with $10 on each. Those cards are redeemable at participating shops such as Thumbs Up Diner or Brick House Pub. The authors typically arrive at the festival on a Friday and depart on Sunday, which is when the cards expire. For every card cashed in at a restaurant or other establishment, the book festival reimburses half.

“Authors love [the cards]. The returning authors come back and one of the first things they ask when they get here is, ‘Where are my gift cards,’” Wang said. “If we were giving them $50 in cash, I don’t think they’d be as eager about it to tell you the truth.”

It’s win-win!