WOODSTOCK, Ga. — A Woodstock couple is exclusively talking to Channel 2 Action News about the time they were pulled over at gunpoint by an officer now indicted for involuntary manslaughter.
Channel 2′s Audrey Washington exclusively obtained police body and dash camera videos of a December 2022 traffic stop involving Grant Matthew Shaw, a now-former Woodstock police officer.
“I was shocked, scared, nervous,” said the driver, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation.
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The driver said he and his wife were rushing to the emergency animal hospital because their dog was coughing up blood. He said he saw flashing blue lights behind him and then he waved his hand out the window, to acknowledge the officer before he pulled over to a safe spot at the hospital.
The video next showed the officer, later identified as Shaw, step out of his police cruiser and point a gun at the driver and his wife.
“Get out of the car now!” Shaw can be heard shouting on the body cam video. “Get out! Let me see your hands!”
In the case report, Shaw stated he pulled his pistol and was “keeping it at a low ready with the muzzle toward the ground.”
The driver told Washington that’s not the case.
“He was screaming, ‘Get out the car, get out the car,’ and he had his gun pointed right at me,” he said.
The driver said he was ultimately charged with DUI, even though he said he was not drunk. The case is still pending.
But the driver also said when he heard about what happened to 20-year-old Emmanuel Millard, he was not surprised.
“Me and my wife looked at each other and we said, ‘That guy is going to shoot somebody one day,’” the driver explained.
Thursday, a grand jury indicted former officer Shaw on an involuntary manslaughter charge after he shot and killed Millard following a traffic stop and subsequent police pursuit in October 2023.
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Washington spoke exclusively with Millard’s family on Friday.
“We know he’s guilty,” said Millard’s father, Joseph Francis III.
“I just want him to get the full extended punishment,” Lenette Millard added.
The couple in the 2022 traffic stop incident said Shaw should have never been on the streets.
“We just had that gut feeling it had to be that guy. He was just so gun happy,” said the driver’s wife said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Woodstock Police Department said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Washington then reached out to the Cobb County District Attorney’s office, where the deadly shooting happened and where the charge was brought.
In a text message, a spokesperson for the Cobb County District Attorney’s office said in part:
“...we can’t comment on a pending case. Every defendant is entitled to due process. And to ensure fairness and impartiality.”
The case is expected to go to trial in the coming weeks.
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