Lizzie Thomas woke up Friday morning and, like normal, waited for her grandson to get home with breakfast.
Taurus Andrews, 42, worked the overnight shift at the Dart Container plant in Conyers. He usually stopped by Bojangles' or Ingle's on his way back home to Oxford.
“I waited on him and I waited,” Thomas said. “Past eight o’clock and he didn’t show.”
Finally, there was a knock on the door — but it was a police officer, not a grandson with a bag of biscuits.
Andrews wasn’t coming home.
Many questions surrounding Andrews’ death remain unanswered. But the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office believes he was shot and killed around 6:58 a.m. — two minutes before quitting time — when another employee walked into Dart and opened fire.
That employee, an 18-year-old temp agency worker named Cameron Golden, was captured hours later in Birmingham. He will be charged with murder, Rockdale Sheriff Eric Levett said.
Levett called the incident an “act of workplace violence.” He admitted he didn’t have many other answers.
“We don’t know if Mr. Andrews was a target,” Levett said at a lunchtime press conference. “We don’t know if Mr. Golden was upset with Dart Container, was he upset with any particular person there. We just don’t know those answers as of yet.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Golden’s arrest was the culmination of five frantic hours in Rockdale County.
Within about three minutes of being called, deputies were outside the Dart facility off Ga. 138 — one of four Georgia plants run by the Michigan-based company that manufactures plastic food containers, cups and straws.
At first, authorities feared an active shooter situation or an act of terror. The five or so deputies who initially entered the building instead found Andrews on the floor, more than 30 of his colleagues running around panicked and no immediate sign of further trouble.
Law enforcement got Andrews into an ambulance, set up a perimeter and, eventually, evacuated company employees in Rockdale County school buses. Workers identified Golden as the shooter and a truck driver told authorities he’d seen a man matching his description running away from the scene, Levett said.
As representatives from Rockdale, Conyers police, the Georgia State Patrol and other agencies set up a command center at a nearby park, several local schools were placed on lockdown. Flashing lights pierced the cold, steady rain as officers in patrol cars blocked all entrances to Rockdale County High School, Rockdale Magnet School and C.J. Hicks Elementary.
For hours, the Rockdale Sheriff’s Office said little about the incident. A Facebook post warned residents to avoid the area.
“I live nearby and this is crazy,” one woman commented. “I hope they catch him soon.”
Shortly after noon, Levett announced that Andrews had died and that he’d just been informed of Golden’s capture. It was not immediately clear how the latter got to the Alabama Greyhound station where he was captured.
Levett said authorities currently have no information suggesting that another suspect was involved — but they don’t yet know how Golden made his initial escape from the Dart campus.
“We don’t know if there was a waiting car, or did someone take him, or did he drive the car that he normally drives,” Levett said.
In a statement posted to its website, Dart confirmed that Golden was a temporary agency employee who worked at the Conyers plant. The company said Andrews joined the company as a utility worker in 2018.
The statement said the Conyers plant would remain closed until further notice and counselors would be on-site when it reopened.
“Our hearts go out to [Andrews’] family and we are supporting them during this most difficult time,” the statement said.
Andrews grew up in Covington and was raised by his grandmother, who called him a good person who kept to himself and always kept a job. He did not have a spouse or any children.
Thomas, the grandmother, said that if Andrews had issues with anyone at work he never mentioned it.
The family is waiting for answers just like everyone else.
“When he left yesterday, he told me, he said, ‘mama, I’ll see you in the morning,’ ” Thomas said.
