A man identified by police as a former boyfriend shot and killed a woman yesterday afternoon inside the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, before being shot by a Turner security officer, police said.

Preliminary reports indicate the suspect was shot in the face, a law enforcement source said on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Investigators have not released a name, saying the man was not carrying any identification.

The shooting victim, 22-year-old Clara Riddles, was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital where she died from her injuries.

The shooter was also taken to the hospital where he was undergoing surgery and was in "severely critical condition," the hospital said.

Witness Charles Williams was riding up the escalator toward the Omni Hotel lobby when he saw the man pulling his victim by her hair with his left hand.

She was screaming and crying and holding on to her hair close to her head with both hands, Williams said.

"I was walking directly toward them and he and I were eye-to-eye, and so I started looking at his right hand to see if he had something," said Williams.

The suspect warned Williams, "Get out my way, pimpin'."

"I knew you don't say that to someone unless you got something," said Williams, who said he tried to see if the man was holding a weapon but couldn't see the man's right hand.

Williams moved aside and quickly motioned for the nearest security officer to come to him.

"I was saying, 'Come here quickly, come!'"

Williams lost sight of the man and woman as they turned into a hallway outside the CNN.com newsroom. The officer radioed in a disturbance report and soon other security officers were on the scene.

John Helton, a CNN.com producer, had a clear view of the gunman through glass doors.

"I saw him coming down the escalator pulling her along, around the corner. He ran into the plant and that's when they started struggling," he said.

"She seemed to be trying to wrestle free of him," he said.

Helton said the woman appeared to be shot at point-blank range.

"He looked like he had the gun right on top of her head and shot her."

The gunman was then shot by Capt. Odell Adams, who joined Turner Security in 1996, according to a spokesperson for Turner, the parent company for CNN.

Riddles was working Tuesday at the Omni Hotel where she had been employed for about a year, hotel spokesman Michael Sullivan said. She worked in the Honor Bar department restocking minibars in the rooms.

Atlanta police called the shooting a "domestic situation."