Lawyers for the family of a tire store employee who was fatally shot by police while inside a customer’s Maserati, said their meeting Monday with Smyrna’s police chief left them with more questions than answers.
“They talked about the process,” said Mawuli Davis, hired by the parents of Nicholas Taft Thomas, fatally shot on Tuesday outside the tire store where he worked. That process calls for an investigation led by Cobb County police and not the GBI, as Thomas’ family had requested.
Smyrna police attempted to serve Thomas, 25, with an arrest warrant stemming from a probation violation. He had been sentenced to probation twice in the last two years, for a drug charge and for aggravated assault against a police officer. In the latter case, he was accused of “driving and accelerating” his car in the direction of a Kennesaw State University officer who had attempted to stop him for speeding.
Officers on the scene said that’s just what happened last week outside the Goodyear on Cumberland Parkway. Sgt. Kenneth Owens, who leads the department’s street crimes unit, fired the fatal shot, Smyrna police said Monday.
According to police, the officers initially fired “less than lethal” bean bag rounds at the car in an attempt to break out the passenger side windows, which were tinted.
Davis has questioned the official account, noting that the shots appeared to be fired as Thomas was passing by Owens and Officer Mark Cole, who assisted in serving the warrant.
“If you can step out of the way to avoid injury, is your life still in danger?” Davis said.
A witness, who asked not to be identified, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the officers’ safety was never threatened.
“If they were in imminent danger, why were they shooting so close to the car?” the witness, who lives in the area, said.
The AJC has learned Cobb police took possession of Goodyear surveillance footage from last Tuesday. A manager at Goodyear said their cameras most likely recorded the incident from beginning to end as it was confined to the store’s parking lot.
Davis said last week that because Cobb police provided back-up to the Smyrna officers serving the warrant they should not be handling the investigation into the shooting.
Thomas’ mother, who attended Monday’s meeting with Chief David Lee and representatives of the Cobb district attorney’s office, said “police need to stop investigating themselves. This is an American problem.”
Owens was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. He was hired by Smyrna in 2001 and was previously employed by Cobb police for five years. He resigned in March 1999, 10 days after he was arrested for simple battery following a fight with his wife, who told officers Owens hit her on the arm repeatedly and threw a boot at her because she failed to press his police uniform, according to documents obtained from Georgia’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Council.
Less than one year earlier, police were called to Owens’ home on another allegation of domestic violence but his wife declined to press charges, a P.O.S.T. case summary stated.
Owens has avoided any sanctions since then, according to P.O.S.T., and in 2003 received an award of merit from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce for talking a man out of suicide.
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