A Middle Georgia police officer was indicted Friday on charges of aggravated assault and violation of his oath of office in connection with last fall’s shooting and wounding of a Gainesville man, who investigators have said drove a stolen SUV into the side of a McDonald’s and struck the officer’s unoccupied cruiser while trying to flee.
The formal accusations against Byron police officer Ryan Carroll, 32, came as a surprising development in the case, which briefly made headlines locally due in part to the car chase that ensued through two counties.
There had been no known public outcry about improper action on the officer’s part in the Oct. 23, 2023, incident, and there had been no indication from the authorities that his use of deadly force may have been improper. Such charges are rare in officer-involved shootings. The case was reviewed by a Peach County grand jury.
Body camera footage of the incident viewed in recent weeks by The Atlanta Journal Constitution shows the officer pull into the McDonald’s parking lot shortly before noon. The restaurant sits off I-75 amid a cluster of roadside fast-food establishments at an interchange about a dozen miles south of Macon.
Carroll had been on the lookout for a silver 2018 Volkswagen Atlas that had been reported stolen from the Atlanta area.
The officer, upon seeing the SUV with a license plate that matched one sent to him by dispatchers moments earlier, pulled up and stopped a car length or so behind the SUV, which was parked on the side of the restaurant near a main door.
Carroll walked around to the front of the McDonald’s, looking through the eatery’s windows for the SUV’s driver. He seemed to notice someone suspicious. Carroll, speaking on his radio, said, “I got somebody playing peekaboo.”
The person he saw, later identified by authorities as 37-year-old Kory M. Karpich of Gainesville, bolted out the side door of the McDonald’s near the SUV.
“They’re running!” Carroll said.
The officer arrived at the Atlas SUV about the time the running person jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
“Get out! Get out!” Carroll yelled.
Carroll again ordered Karpich to “get out of the car!”
When Karpich didn’t, Carroll busted the SUV’s driver’s side window with what appeared to be a baton, cracking a hole about the size of a football. The officer repeated his command to “get out!”
Carroll also tried opening the door, which appears to have been locked.
Soon after, Carroll fired his Taser at Karpich, which the GBI has said in a preliminary statement “was ineffective.”
At that point, the SUV squealed its tires and lurched forward. It banged over a curb and into the side of the McDonald’s before reversing course. It surged backward and clipped Carroll’s cruiser, which was parked behind it. The SUV halted for a moment and Carroll took cover behind another car by the door of the restaurant.
Carroll then rose from behind that car.
“Stop!” he yelled.
Then over the course of about three seconds, Carroll fired nine shots into the SUV’s windshield. Bullets pierced the glass in a tight pattern just above the steering wheel. Karpich, the driver, was wounded in the gunfire but not critically, the GBI said in its October statement. The statement noted Karpich was “expected to recover.”
About six seconds later, as the SUV fled in reverse across the parking lot near the drive-through line and away from the officer, Carroll fired a 10th shot at the SUV.
According to the GBI, Karpich then led police on a chase into neighboring Bibb County, where he crashed.
Karpich was arrested on methamphetamine-possession charges and for other alleged crimes that include fleeing and eluding police, obstruction and theft. He has been held since then at the Peach County jail.
An arrest warrant for Carroll was expected to be issued in the coming days. His attorney on Friday declined to comment.
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