Authorities are looking for a man after a domestic dispute in northwest Atlanta Thursday morning prompted an off-duty sheriff’s deputy to intervene and fire his gun.
No one was hit in the shooting, but a woman involved in the domestic dispute was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital with a head injury, officials said.
Atlanta police were called to investigate a fight with a weapon about 8:30 a.m. at Joseph E. Lowery and Joseph E. Boone boulevards, Officer Lisa Bender told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Our preliminary investigation suggests that the female victim was in a vehicle with her boyfriend when a physical altercation ensued prompting the female to exit the vehicle,” she said.
When the woman got out of the vehicle, she flagged down another driver “telling him that her boyfriend was trying to kill her,” Bender said.
The woman got into the other driver’s car and they headed east on Joseph E. Boone toward Northside Drive. The boyfriend followed them, police said.
At some point, the deputy intervened, Bender said.
GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said the boyfriend had a weapon, and the deputy “gave multiple verbal commands for the subject to drop his weapon.”
The deputy ended up shooting at the man, who sped away from the scene, Miles said.
Authorities later found the vehicle but not the driver, Miles said.
Though there were reports that the deputy interrupted a kidnapping, Miles said she did not know if that was the case.
And, Bender said, officers were still “investigating the altercation leading to the female being injured.”
The woman’s condition was not known.
There were no other reports of injuries.
The GBI, which investigates use-of-force cases, is looking into the incident, which the agency is classifying as an officer-involved shooting.
“One criteria is that someone is hit and it results in death or serious bodily injury,” Miles previously told The AJC. “The other criteria is that the officer discharged his/her weapon.”
So far, there have been 74 officer-involved shootings in Georgia this year, according to the GBI. In 2016, the agency investigated 77 officer-involved shootings.
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