A South Georgia man was injured Wednesday after he fired a deer rifle toward five law enforcement officers and they returned fire, the GBI said.
The state agency is investigating the incident, which involved Moultrie police officers as well as Colquitt County and Thomas County sheriff’s deputies.
According to the GBI, the Moultrie agency was first on scene Wednesday and found a man threatening his father and another person with a knife at a home in the 1400 block of West Boulevard. The man, later identified as 50-year-old Bernard Lynn Patterson, allegedly grabbed a deer rifle and pointed it at the officers several times during the encounter.
RELATED: Man hit officer with 'blunt object' before being shot, killed in Roswell, GBI says
“After hours of attempting to get him to put the gun down, he fired at least one round at the officers and they returned fire,” said Mike Callahan, the GBI special agent in charge.
Patterson was shot at least once and flown to a hospital in Tallahassee, where he was stable Thursday, Callahan said in a news release. No officers were injured.
On Monday, the GBI identified the five officers who fired shots. They were Fernando Hernandez with Moultrie police, Blake Livings, Kristopher Sutton and Ivan Folsom with the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office and Josh Smith with the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s unclear whether the officers have been placed on administrative leave, which is common while officer-involved shooting investigations are ongoing.
The incident was the 40th officer-involved shooting the GBI has investigated 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.
In other news:
About the Author
