Deaundre Phillips was no angel, family members said Monday, but he was also no thug, nor was he foolish enough to smoke marijuana outside a police station.
The 24-year-old Atlanta man was shot and killed Thursday night in the parking lot of the Atlanta Public Safety Annex on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. According to Atlanta police, Phillips tried to flee the scene in a friend's car after being questioned by two plainclothes officers who said they smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle.
As Phillips drove away, one of the officers was halfway inside the vehicle, according to police. He responded with a fatal shot to Phillips’ neck.
There is no dispute that Phillips tried to flee, though his motives are unclear. Attorney Chris Stewart, representing Phillips’ kin, said he may have thought he was being carjacked, as the officers, who have not been identified, were out of uniform.
Stewart said surveillance video of the parking lot would help to provide clarity.
The GBI, which is handling the investigation, said it will not release the video at this time but might reconsider once witness interviews are complete.
“We don’t want to compromise that part of the investigation,” GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said.
Stewart also accused Atlanta police of muddying the waters by releasing information about Phillips, alleging the Douglas High School graduate was affiliated with the Rolling 60s Crips gang and had a lengthy criminal record.
“Police departments mess up,” Stewart said. “They need people to feel bad for the officer and not the victim. They need to make this person someone you can look down to, you can’t relate to. So they make him a gang member, a criminal.”
Atlanta police did not supply details about Phillips’ alleged gang involvement. Stewart said Phillips’ criminal record is confined to charges, including criminal trespass and obstruction of an officer, that date back six years, when he was in high school.
“If that’s a lengthy criminal history then half the people in this state have a lengthy criminal history,” Stewart said. “It’s infuriating when police departments do this to a family.”
Fulton County Jail records show one other arrest for Phillips, in 2014, for speeding, driving without a license, cocaine possession and additional drug charges. It’s unclear at this time how that case was disposed.
Phillips had accompanied a friend to the police annex to pick up some documents, Stewart said. The friend, who remains unidentified pending his interview by GBI agents, said when he went into the station, Phillips was asleep in the driver’s seat. He denied they had smoked any weed, though Miles said investigators found marijuana on Phillips.
There also was a handgun inside the vehicle. Miles said they have yet to identify who owned it.
It appears only one shot was fired, Atlanta police said last week.
“My grandson was treated unfairly,” Phillips’ grandmother, Deborah Hall, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The person they portrayed him to be is not the person he was.”
Hall said she spoke to Phillips daily on the phone.
“Dre Dre was a family man. That was his heart,” Hall said, referring to Phillips’ 5-year-old daughter. “He was a good father, a good role model to his baby.”
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