Gwinnett County police shot and killed a suspect during a domestic incident in Duluth on Saturday evening, according to the GBI.
Officers arrived at a home on Oak Hampton Way just after 7:30 p.m., a Gwinnett police news release states. The 911 caller told officers her son was armed with a knife and threatening her.
Responding officers found the man, identified by the GBI as 28-year-old Jonathan Laubscher, with the knife and approaching them, according to a GBI news release. Police ordered him to drop the knife, but he did not. They then used a Taser on him, and he still did not drop the knife.
Sometime later, Laubscher, still holding the knife, lunged at an officer, according to the GBI. That officer shot Laubscher.
Laubscher was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the GBI said.
No officers were injured during the incident.
The GBI will conduct an independent investigation. Once completed, it will turn over its findings to the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office for review.
On Friday, the GBI began investigating another fatal shooting by police.
Atlanta officers were attempting to serve a warrant for murder in Fairburn when the suspect, 22-year-old Chase McDermott, refused to exit the home. He was allegedly armed, and police shot him in an upstairs bedroom.
McDermott had been wanted in a gang-related shooting in the Carey Park neighborhood that happened in late March. He’d already been arrested on multiple gang-related charges but had been released March 31 on bond of more than $200,000, online jail records show.
Friday’s and Saturday’s incidents marked the 43rd and 44th officer-involved shootings the GBI has been asked to investigate this year. By the same time last year, there had been 26.
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.
About the Author