Atlanta police were searching Thursday for a man they say carried out two random attacks near the Beltline, including a fatal stabbing near the Ansley Golf Club that left a woman dead and a separate assault on a postal worker with a rock at a nearby U.S. Post Office. Police said the incidents happened around noon and were connected.

The woman was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where she died. Her identity was not released. The postal worker had minor injuries and was treated, police said. The attacks triggered a temporary lockdown at Midtown High School and Howard Middle School, with students escorted to buses to head home and those who walk or ride bicycles required to seek parental permission or be picked up.

Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said officers believed the same man was responsible for both attacks and that the victims were chosen at random. He described the suspect as a Black man wearing all black clothing and riding an orange bicycle. Police had good photos of him, Schierbaum said, but did not know his identity.

The chief said investigators were looking at the possibility that the man was experiencing a mental health crisis. He also said police were using every available tool to find him, including officers on foot, K-9 units, bicycles, vehicles and drones. Roughly 60 yards of the Beltline behind Flagler Avenue, just south of I-85, was closed as police searched the area.

“The infrastructure of cameras on the Beltline is robust, so we have good photos of him. We just don’t have his identity,” Schierbaum said. He also called the case “a shock” and “an outlier,” adding that police would arrest the suspect.

The attacks unfolded on the Beltline, the miles-long walking and biking path that cuts through Atlanta and draws heavy daily traffic. Schierbaum said thousands of people use it every day and that very few incidents occur. Atlanta police also have a dedicated path force that patrols the Beltline and nearby parks and neighborhoods, a unit created to keep watch over the corridor that has become one of the city’s busiest public spaces.

The violence Thursday comes against a troubling backdrop. A stabbing in the same area in 2024 involved an escaped prison inmate who was charged with murder. In 2022, a man was found shot to death on the Beltline in Inman Park, and two men were later found guilty of attempting to rob 60-year-old Thomas Arnold before killing him. Atlanta Beltline Inc. said it was aware of Thursday’s incident.

For now, police are treating the case as a search for a single suspect in two unrelated-looking but connected attacks, and investigators say the next step is not figuring out what happened — it is finding the man on the orange bicycle before he disappears into the city again.