HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — Investigators said a man wanted for murder is dead after being shot by a police officer in the parking lot of a Henry County shopping plaza.
Henry County Sheriff Reginald Scandrett said the deceased was wanted for questioning in the beating death Thursday morning of a woman believed to have been the suspect’s girlfriend.
Powder Springs Police Chief Lane Cadwell said officers found the woman’s body after conducting a welfare check at a townhome on Equity Lane around 10 a.m.
Scandrett said officers began tracking the man and followed him to the shopping center and negotiated with him as he sat in a white truck.
“He continued to say, ‘Today is the day.’ He took a last drink, or a drink of some kind of substance, and he stepped outside of his vehicle very slowly,” Scandrett said.
The sheriff said he pointed his weapon at the officers and that’s when he was shot.
A Facebook live video obtained by Channel 2′s Tom Jones shows workers in the shopping center watching the standoff and recording the hail of bullets.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Grandmother, 86, hopes inmates beat attacker ‘to a pulp’ after he was found guilty of assaulting her
- ‘Armed and dangerous’: Police searching for 2 suspects who robbed metro Atlanta Waffle House
- Dog found walking on street ‘engulfed in flames’ in DeKalb County neighborhood
Henry County police are not saying much on the record about what happened. They released a statement that the shooting happened around 1 p.m. Thursday and said the scene is secured and the area is safe.
Mike Woods said he witnessed the shooting. He told Jones that he saw police negotiating with the suspect for about 10 minutes.
The witness said the man got out of the vehicle with his hands up.
“I didn’t see a gun,” Woods said. “It’s being rumored there was a gun. I didn’t see one.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the shooting.
Thursday’s shooting is the 7th officer-involved shooting in the last month and a half.
IN OTHER NEWS:
This browser does not support the video element.