A man carrying a machete in downtown LaGrange was seriously injured when he was shot by police early Tuesday morning after they confronted him and he refused to drop his weapon, officials said.
Ronald McCormick, 39, of LaGrange, was seen walking with the machete near Karvela’s Pizza on Lafayette Parkway shortly after 5:15 a.m., GBI spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said in a news release. An officer responded and tried to approach McCormick, but he ran away and the officer called for backup. Another officer arrived and confronted McCormick, who refused to drop the machete, authorities said.
Police tried to use a Taser on McCormick, but it was ineffective, Ammons said. The officer then shot McCormick multiple times, seriously injuring him. McCormick was taken to Piedmont Hospital in Columbus and underwent surgery. Further information on his status and the nature of his injures was not released.
The incident began when a LaGrange city employee called 911 to report the man, and a police officer responded and spoke with McCormick from his patrol car. McCormick identified himself to the officer, who ran a query on him and found that he had three outstanding Superior Court bench warrants, which are issued by a judge after a defendant fails to show up for a trial.
McCormick was previously charged in two cases involving possession of methamphetamine in 2016 and 2020. In another 2017 case, he was accused of hitting an 11-year-old boy in the face and pushing his head into a wall, according to online court records. In that case, he faced one count each of first-degree cruelty to children, battery and obstruction. McCormick submitted negotiated guilty pleas in the earlier two cases but has not entered a plea in the 2020 drug case.
After learning of McCormick’s bench warrants, the officer followed him in a patrol car along Hill Street and tried to approach him again, but the suspect ran away in the direction of Greenville Street, Ammons said. The first officer called for backup and the second officer who responded ultimately confronted and shot McCormick, she said.
Neither officer was injured.
The LaGrange Police Department has requested an independent investigation into the shooting by the GBI, a typical practice in officer-involved shooting incidents in Georgia. Once the investigation is complete, it will be turned over to the Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office for review, Ammons said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the GBI Columbus Office at 706-565-7888. Tips can also be submitted anonymously by calling 1-800-597-8477, online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.
This was the 74th officer-involved shooting investigated by the GBI in 2021, and the second Tuesday. A man suspected of carjacking a woman with a compound bow and arrow in Midtown Atlanta was later shot by police in Marietta after pointing his weapon at the responding officers, the GBI said.
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