FILED

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

JOHN LEY

CLERK

[PUBLISH]

 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

 FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

 ________________________

 No. 10-10612 

Non-Argument Calendar

 ________________________

 D.C. Docket No. 4:08-cr-00224-WTM-GRS-1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee,

versus

HAROLD SHAWN WILLIAMS,

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant.

________________________

 Appeal from the United States District Court

 for the Southern District of Georgia

 ________________________

(September 13, 2010)

Before BLACK, PRYOR and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Harold Williams was arrested on gun charges after police investigating a

nearby gunfire incident stopped the car in which he was riding. After the district
court denied his motion to suppress a gun found during the stop, Williams

conditionally pleaded guilty to the unlawful possession of a firearm under 18

U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Williams now appeals, challenging the denial of his motion,

and we must decide whether the police had reasonable suspicion to stop the car.

I

Officer Samuel Hunt was parked outside a public housing project in

Savannah, Georgia, filling out paperwork, when he heard a gunshot. It was 1:30

in the morning, the streets were quiet, and having worked the area for two years,

Officer Hunt knew that the housing project had its fair share of crime. Within a

few seconds, a car quickly pulled out of one of the housing project’s two exits and

headed down the road. His suspicions aroused, Officer Hunt called for backup

and pulled the car over.

Backup arrived a few minutes later, and another police officer standing just

a few feet away saw Harold Williams, a passenger in the car, remove a handgun

from his waistband and try to hide it under the center console. The police

immediately arrested Williams and seized the gun, which later formed the basis for

an indictment charging Williams with the unlawful possession of a firearm under

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

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Williams moved to suppress the gun on the ground that Officer Hunt had

not had reasonable suspicion to justify stopping the car. A magistrate judge

recommended denying the motion, and the district court agreed. Williams then

entered a conditional guilty plea reserving the right to challenge the denial of his

motion to suppress. He now exercises that right, and we affirm his conviction.

II

“The Fourth Amendment prohibits ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ by

the Government, and its protections extend [even] to brief investigatory stops of

persons or vehicles that fall short of traditional arrest.” United States v. Arvizu,

534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002). Accordingly, the general rule is that law enforcement

officials may not detain a person without probable cause to believe that he has

committed a crime. But in the context of “necessarily swift action predicated upon

the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat,” the Supreme Court has

crafted an exception to that rule: “where a police officer observes unusual conduct

which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal

activity may be afoot,” the officer may briefly stop the persons involved to

confirm or dispel his suspicions. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 30 (1968).

In accordance with the Court’s description of these “Terry stop[s],” “law

enforcement agents may briefly stop a moving automobile to investigate a

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reasonable suspicion that its occupants are involved in criminal activity.” United

States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 226 (1985). In addition, “the police are not

automatically shorn of authority to stop a suspect . . . merely because the criminal

has completed his crime and escaped from the scene.” Id. at 228. “[I]f police have

a reasonable suspicion, grounded in specific and articulable facts, that a person

they encounter was involved in . . . a completed felony, then a Terry stop may be

made to investigate that suspicion.” Id. at 229.

The only question here is whether Officer Hunt had reason to suspect that

the occupants of the car he stopped had been involved in criminal activity. “[T]he 1

concept of reasonable suspicion is somewhat abstract,” but this much is clear: we

must consider the “totality of the circumstances” and determine for ourselves

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whether Officer Hunt had a “particularized and objective basis for suspecting

wrongdoing.” Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 274, 273 (quotation marks omitted). “Although

an officer’s reliance on a mere hunch is insufficient to justify a stop, the likelihood

of criminal activity need not rise to the level required for probable cause, and it

 At the hearing on Williams’s motion to suppress, Officer Hunt testified that he had also 1

seen the car roll through a stop sign, although that information was not included in his incident

report. Because he admitted, and the Government now concedes, that he stopped the car based

solely on his suspicions of the occupants’ involvement in a possible shooting, we do not decide

whether Officer Hunt had probable cause to stop the car.

See Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 275 (“[T]he standard for appellate review of reasonable- 2

suspicion determinations should be de novo, rather than for ‘abuse of discretion.’”).

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falls considerably short of satisfying a preponderance of the evidence standard.” 

Id. at 274 (quotation marks and citations omitted).

Williams argues that Officer Hunt lacked justification to conduct a Terry

stop because the housing project had two exits, Officer Hunt could see only one of

them, and the shooter could have used other. But the law does not require

absolute certainty or even probable cause before an officer stops a car; he need

only reasonably suspect that its occupants are involved in criminal activity. When

Officer Hunt saw a lone vehicle hurriedly pulling out of a high-crime housing

project in the middle of the night within seconds of a gunshot, it was eminently

reasonable of him to suspect that the car’s occupants might have committed a

crime. Accord United States v. Bolden, 508 F.3d 204, 206 (5th Cir. 2007)

(“[W]hen an officer sees a solitary vehicle . . . leaving the precise spot where that

officer has good reason to believe that multiple persons were shooting less than a

minute before, it is more than a ‘hunch’ that those in the vehicle may be involved

in the shooting.”); United States v. Henning, 906 F.2d 1392, 1396 (10th Cir. 1990)

(concluding that reasonable suspicion justified the stop of a lone car, moving

quickly, that “emerged from the general area of an early morning gunshot heard by

officers only seconds earlier” in a high-crime area).

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The vehicle stop here was justified by Officer Hunt’s reasonable suspicion,

and the resulting search incident to Williams’s arrest revealed a hidden gun. 

Accordingly, the district court did not err by denying Williams’s motion to

suppress the gun seized during the stop. His conviction is therefore

AFFIRMED.

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