A man was sentenced to 18 years in prison Thursday after a botched traffic stop led to a state trooper being dragged down Delk Road.
Alvaro Santana Jimenez, 38, of Conyers, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated battery and two counts of obstruction of an officer, according to the Cobb district attorney's office.
Jimenez will also have to pay a $300,000 fine for a charge of trafficking in illegal drugs.
Chief Magistrate Joyette Holmes told Jimenez that he will likely be deported to his native country of Mexico when his sentence is over.
"Understand the benefit you are getting today, even as bad as it may sound," Holmes told Jimenez, according to the DA's office. "In the posture in which it sits, this could have been much worse. There could have been a death."
The night of Oct. 14, 2015, two Georgia State Patrol troopers stopped a 2006 Nissan Pathfinder that Jimenez was driving on Delk Road.
Jimenez was out of his SUV and standing by a trooper’s car when he ran back to the Pathfinder.
Cpl. J.L. Thompson and the other trooper got into a tussle with Jimenez, who managed to get into the driver's seat of the SUV.
Thompson "became entangled in the window as Jimenez drove away and was dragged for approximately 40 yards before he was dislodged," the district attorney's office said.
The 46-year-old trooper had a fractured skull and eye socket along with cranial bleeding.
With the trooper lying in the roadway, Jimenez dumped half a kilogram of heroin into a Franklin Road parking lot before he was caught.
Thompson has been in law enforcement 27 years and recently went back to work.
"It is of utmost importance that we protect those who risk their lives to protect us," said prosecutor Jason Saliba. "In Cobb County, we will not allow violence against a police officer."
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