Authorities were searching for the wrong person in Friday’s chase and shootout with Rockdale County sheriff’s deputies in DeKalb County, the Rockdale sheriff’s spokesman said Saturday.
The mix-up began when someone pistol-whipped a man about 10 a.m. Friday outside an apartment in the 2500 block of Golfview Terrace and took his tan Lincoln Town Car. The carjacking victim, Rockdale sheriff’s investigator Michael Camp said, “put the guy that we issued the lookout for in the (stolen) car.
“It wasn’t a random robbery,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The victim knew” 23-year-old Deonte Douglas Huddleston, the man authorities originally identified as the suspect.
DeKalb police joined Rockdale in the search for Huddleston and Miller Grove High School was placed on lockdown as a precaution. But by Friday evening, Rockdale authorities received a tip that the actual suspect injured in the shootout with deputies was a 16-year-old unidentified acquaintance of Huddleston who was seeking treatment at Grady Memorial Hospital, Camp said.
“A family member drove him to Grady between 5 and 6 o’clock,” he said.
Camp said Saturday that officials now believe three people — the teenager, Huddleston and an unidentified woman — went to an area near the scene of the carjacking in one car, parked a couple streets over and “the 16-year-old suspect is the one who ultimately took” the Town Car.
After a lookout was issued for the Town Car, a pair of deputies saw a vehicle matching that description on I-20 westbound near Sigman Road and a chase began, Rockdale Sheriff Eric Levett said.
The teenager exited I-20 at Evans Mill Road and led pursuing deputies to the parking lot of the Windward Forest Apartment Homes at 6250 Hillandale Dr., where he wrecked the stolen car, authorities said. The teenager, Camp and Levett said, got out of the vehicle with a gun and a deputy fired at him.
He “dropped his gun and fled on foot,” Levett said. It is unclear if the teenager fired the weapon he was seen holding.
Investigators recovered the handgun and the GBI was brought in to investigate the shooting.
Rockdale authorities Saturday were watching the teenage suspect “around the clock until he’s released from the hospital.” His injuries do not appear to be life-threatening, Camp said.
While their “biggest goal was to get the guy involved in the shooting chase, we’re still actively searching for Huddleston and the unidentified female,” Camp said.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to contact Lt. Mike Dougherty at 770-278-8152 or via email at michael.dougherty@rockdalecounty.org.
— Staff writer Rodney Thrash contributed to this report.
