When deputies in South Georgia arrived at a home Wednesday after receiving a 911 call about a domestic dispute, authorities said they were met by a man holding a gun in each hand.
The situation on Marigold Road in Rochelle escalated when deputies with the Ben Hill County Sheriff’s Office asked the 38-year-old to drop his weapons and he refused, according to the GBI. After “numerous attempts” to get Jeremiah Hasenbalg to comply, authorities said he advanced toward one of the three deputes, still holding both guns.
That’s when the deputy fired at Hasenbalg, striking him, the GBI said.
After the man was taken to Tift Regional Medical Center in Tifton, the sheriff’s office asked the GBI to handle the investigation. Hasenbalg was reported to be stable, and no deputies were injured in the shooting.
It’s the 90th officer-involved shooting the state agency has investigated this year and the third in 24 hours. Fifty of those 90 shootings have been deadly. Last year, the GBI was requested to handle 96 such incidents.
Late Tuesday, a Clayton County police officer was shot and killed and a second officer was injured after responding to a domestic disturbance. Field Training Officer Henry Laxson was one of four people who died during the incident in Rex, police said.
Laxson was the third Georgia officer killed in the line of duty in the past month and the eighth in 2021. Officer Alex Chandler was shot in the hand. The suspect, identified by the GBI as 35-year-old Arthur Allen Gilliam, was killed. Two women, whose names have not been released, also died, and a 12-year-old boy was shot in the face but survived.
A few hours later, two DeKalb County deputies were shot while attempting to serve a man with an arrest warrant. Investigators Ja’rad Hunt and Aaron Jackson survived and are recovering at a hospital, but the suspect, Edward Allen Gatling, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with multiple law enforcement agencies after an hourslong manhunt.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also tracks officer-involved shootings that don’t involve the GBI, and those numbers sometimes differ from the GBI’s tally. After the agency finishes its independent investigation into the Rochelle incident, the results will be turned over to the Cordele Circuit District Attorney’s Office.
