Their son was killed in a PIT maneuver. Now, they’re suing to get answers.
A little before 3 a.m. on a Sunday two years ago, a Cobb County police officer spotted a problem with a Lexus and turned on his lights to initiate a traffic stop. A few minutes, a short chase and one fateful PIT maneuver later, the driver of the Lexus was dead.
According to the police report, Cobb officer Connor Gehan had noticed something wrong with the headlight of the Lexus and saw it roll through a stop sign. The driver briefly pulled over, but before Gehan called in the license plate number or made contact with the driver, the Lexus took off, according to police.
The driver of the Lexus was Boston Thomas, a 21-year-old who had just moved out of his parents’ Mableton home and was months away from graduating from Chattahoochee Tech. He was driving on a suspended license, but Gehan, a young officer with no disciplinary record and glowing employment reviews, couldn’t have known that yet when he gave chase to the vehicle as it sped away, according to the police report and Thomas’ parents’ allegations about what the police video and audio recordings show of the incident.
There’s a lot Terrica and Ramonne Thomas don’t know about that fateful night.
Some things, they can never know. For example, why did their son, a bookish boy who loved John Grisham novels and thought about being a lawyer someday, drive away from the police? Boston Thomas isn’t alive to tell them, and he didn’t speak to the officer before fleeing.
But there are other things the parents think will make more sense once they hear sworn testimony from the officers who were there that night. That’s why, they said, they decided to sue Cobb County. They want answers.
Two years after the collision that ended Boston Thomas’ life in the predawn hours of May 19, 2024, his parents say they still don’t understand why Gehan chose to pursue the Lexus at high speeds for a minor traffic stop, or why such a dangerous maneuver was used.
“It just seems so extreme,” Terrica Thomas told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We feel like we lost a kid so senselessly. As time goes by, the loss feels bigger.”
Seeking answers and accountability, the couple are now suing Cobb County, claiming it is liable for what they see as the officer’s recklessness. Their lawsuit, filed last month in Cobb County State Court, alleges the officer violated the Cobb County Police Department’s pursuit policy and then colluded with colleagues after the incident to make it seem justified.
The lawsuit cites what the Thomases’ attorneys say is evidence from police reports, footage from Gehan’s body-worn camera and the dash camera in his patrol vehicle, and the recorded conversation in which Georgia State Patrol officers informed the couple about their son’s death, captured on their home’s security camera.
The lawsuit cites some dialogue between responding officers at the scene who allegedly blamed Boston Thomas’ death on his “own stupidity.” It alleges that the narrative officially reported by the officers doesn’t match the footage of the incident.
Representatives for Cobb County and its police department declined to comment as the case is pending. The county is not yet due to respond to the claims in court.
Gehan, who is not a defendant in the court case, did not respond to an inquiry about the allegations. A police officer since May 2022, he has no disciplinary history on record, the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council confirmed.
The litigation could get Gehan and other officers testifying under oath and “not hiding behind sanitized reports they may have written in the comfort of their office,” said Harold Spence, one of the couple’s attorneys.
“This family is entitled to answers,” he said. “The death of their son doesn’t make sense to them and even to us as lawyers it doesn’t make sense.”
A Lexus draws an officer’s attention
The Thomases are open about what they know their son did wrong that night: He was driving on a license that had been suspended a few months before because he missed a court deadline for a traffic violation. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
After Gehan initiated the traffic stop, Boston Thomas pulled over but then sped away, ran a red light and traveled south on Ga. 280, according to the police report. His parents do not dispute those facts.
But another officer providing backup reported that Boston Thomas slammed on his brakes multiple times and turned the Lexus into the path of Gehan’s patrol vehicle, endangering Gehan before the officer hit the Lexus from behind in a PIT maneuver.
That part, the Thomases said, doesn’t match video footage from Gehan’s patrol vehicle.
After Gehan executed the PIT maneuver, the Lexus rolled several times on the Atlanta side of the Chattahoochee River and ended up in woods about 15 yards from the road. Boston Thomas, the only occupant, was ejected from the vehicle. He died on the scene just after emergency medical services arrived and was officially pronounced dead a short time later at Kennestone Hospital, case records show.
At the time, Gehan had just celebrated his 24th birthday and was approaching his two-year anniversary as a police officer. Records from the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council show he had completed an hour of vehicle pursuits training and 16 hours of training on “Precision Immobilization Technique,” or PIT maneuvers, in August 2022.
A reliance on PIT maneuvers has contributed to Georgia having the highest death rate in police pursuits of any state in the country in recent years, an AJC investigation found.
Gehan was briefly placed on administrative leave while the incident was investigated, according to his employee personnel file. The file shows that before becoming a police officer, he studied criminal justice at Kennesaw State University.
Gehan had done an internship at the Cobb County Police Department, where his father also worked, the personnel file shows.
He was praised in a 2024 internal evaluation for “making arrests at a rate well above average,” among other things. His 2025 evaluation said he’d made 90 arrests and written 172 citations.
“He always conducts himself in a way which reflects positively on CCPD and has no sustained citizen complaints,” the 2025 report says. “He has consistently shown that he weighs all the facts of a case and makes decisions that are fair and ethical.”
Grieving parents demand answers
In their lawsuit, the Thomases said there was no reason for Gehan to use a PIT maneuver because their son hadn’t committed any serious crime or posed a threat to the public.
They said Gehan accelerated his patrol vehicle to around 96 miles per hour before ramming the back of the 2000 Lexus though there were no other motorists or pedestrians in the area whose safety was at risk.
The police report said Boston Thomas had been driving more than 20 mph above the speed limit during the pursuit. His parents said that he was traveling around 91 mph at the time of the PIT maneuver, based on police calculations.
“We want to know why,” Ramonne Thomas told the AJC. “It didn’t make sense to me. I was thinking something’s not right.”
Terrica and Ramonne Thomas said Gehan could have used many available safer options to address their son’s conduct, including looking for him at their home, the registered address for the Lexus. They said their son’s alleged misdemeanor offenses of running a stop sign and a red light and fleeing a traffic stop didn’t warrant a high-speed chase or a PIT maneuver.
They allege that under county policy, PIT maneuvers should only be attempted when deadly force is warranted, adding that it’s also a policy violation to attempt a PIT maneuver in an SUV like the one Gehan was driving.
In their complaint, the couple said their son’s toxicology report, ordered by the medical examiner in Fulton County, was “100% negative.”
They said their son’s previous encounters with law enforcement were for traffic infringements such as driving while holding a cellphone, and that he was not subject to an arrest warrant at the time of the pursuit.
The Thomases and their attorneys said they hope the case helps prevent another family from experiencing the same ordeal.
“A lapse of judgment should not confine you to death,” Spence said.
Boston Thomas was smart, inquisitive and especially close to his grandmother, his parents said. They said his loss has been devastating.
“When you have kids, you worry about them breaking a limb, all of those things,” Terrica Thomas said. “You never, ever imagine not seeing them reach their maturity. It’s a club I don’t want to be in.”