What started as a simple act of kindness at a North Georgia gas station Tuesday afternoon ended with a police officer shot and a woman dead.
Calhoun police officers returned fire after a passenger, identified as 27-year-old Tameka LaShay Simpson, began firing from a car parked outside a BP on South Wall Street in Calhoun, according to the GBI. One officer was hit in the arm, and Simpson was killed.
They had stopped to speak with Simpson after Officer Jeremy Thompson helped another woman in her car. The woman, who was not identified, was short on change, and Thompson put up the cash for her to make a purchase, GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said.
When he exited the store, Thompson thought he smelled marijuana coming from the woman’s vehicle, Miles said during a news conference Tuesday night. Officer Joe Yother, a 25-year veteran with the Calhoun Police Department, arrived as backup.
After being asked for her ID, Simpson reached into the glove box, pulled out a gun and fired at Yother’s chest, Miles said. The round hit his bulletproof vest and ricocheted off his cellphone, hitting him in the arm.
He was taken to Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton and is expected to recover, Calhoun police Chief Tony Pyle told Channel 2 Action News.
Thompson and Yother both returned fire, shooting and killing Simpson, Pyle said. The other woman was arrested and taken to the Gordon County Jail.
Miles said that woman faces charges unrelated to the shooting, but the specific charges haven’t been released.
Since Sunday, the GBI has been called to investigate four officer-involved shootings. Those incidents include shootings in Chatham County, Turner County and Bibb County.
The incident in Gordon County is the 88th officer-involved shooting the GBI has been called to investigate this year, Miles said.
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That matches the number of officer-involved shooting investigations the agency opened in 2017.
