An Atlanta police officer attempting to intervene in a road-rage incident shot and killed a man in Midtown on Tuesday night, officials said.
The GBI is investigating the shooting, which occurred shortly after 8 p.m. at the intersection of West Peachtree and 16th streets after the officer came upon a troubling scene involving two vehicles. A woman was thrown from the hood of a Mercedes-Benz as its driver attempted to drive away, according to Atlanta police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr.
“The plain-clothes officer tried to have the driver stop, and then while he stopped, there was some type of verbal altercation that escalated where the officer discharged their weapon,” Hampton told reporters from the scene.
The driver, identified by the GBI as 35-year-old James Wilborn, later died at Grady Memorial Hospital. The 30-year-old woman was also taken to Grady and said to be stable late Tuesday.
The two knew each other and were involved in some type of “road-rage incident,” Hampton said. Each was driving a vehicle, with Wilborn in the white Mercedes and the woman in a white Tesla, according to the GBI.
“It escalated to where the female got on top of the vehicle, and then where the driver drove off,” Hampton said.
The officer, Jordan Hill, is a member of the police department’s Zone 5 unit assigned to a plain-clothes detail, according to Hampton. The initial incident was observed as part of regular patrol, the deputy chief said.
The GBI did not provide additional details about what prompted the officer to use deadly force, saying only that Wilborn “ignored repeated commands from the officer” before the two began to fight.
The incident is the 96th officer-involved shooting the GBI has investigated this year. There were 100 officer-involved shootings in Georgia in all of 2021, according to the state agency.
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