A suspect is dead and a Clayton County deputy injured after a Christmas Day chase that ended in gunfire.
The pursuit started in Clayton County with a stolen car and a wanted suspect, according to the sheriff's office. The chase stopped on a dead-end road in the city of South Fulton, where one deputy was reportedly struck and others opened fire.
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Deputies first spotted the vehicle about 9:45 a.m. as it was speeding on I-285 near Riverdale Road, according GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles. They tried to pull the car over and learned it was reported stolen out of South Fulton.
The chase kicked off when the vehicle failed to stop, Miles said.
Eventually, the incident came to a head in the 4500 block of Ridge Road. With nowhere else to go, the suspect’s vehicle turned around and headed toward the deputies, Miles said.
“At the dead-end, several deputies had exited their vehicles and one of those deputies reported being struck by the fleeing car,” she said in a news release. “The stolen vehicle struck two CCSO patrol vehicles as it attempted to elude the deputies.”
The driver was struck when deputies fired. A photo provided by the sheriff’s office shows a Honda with bullet holes mostly on the driver’s side of the car.
Credit: Clayton County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Clayton County Sheriff's Office
Deputies attempted to perform CPR on the man before medic teams arrived, but he later died at Grady Memorial Hospital. He was identified by the GBI as Deangelo Rashad Martin, 23, of Union City.
An autopsy will be performed at the GBI Crime Lab in Decatur, Miles said.
The officer who reported injuries was also taken to Grady and later released. No other officers were injured, according to the GBI.
The deadly shooting comes the day after another Clayton County deputy shot a suspect during a chase. Donald Clark Wright III, age 24, was expected to survive.
No deputies were hurt in that incident.
The two Clayton County shootings are the 83rd and 84th officer-involved shootings the GBI has been called to investigate in 2019.
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.
— Staff writer Chelsea Prince contributed to this report.
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