A small-town police officer from Pike County is unable to return to work due to injuries he sustained last month in a shootout over a parking ticket while working an off-duty job in downtown Atlanta.
Dan Wilcox, a reserve officer with the Molena Police Department, was working for parking company ATL Plus the night of Oct. 25 when a man approached his car with a gun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. The two men argued, according to Channel 2 Action News, then exchanged gunfire. Both men were shot, leaving Wilcox with a neck wound and killing the second man, 25-year-old Jamon Darryl McCall of Lithonia. A woman was also found at the scene who had been grazed by a bullet.
Wilcox was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but more than three weeks later, he is still recovering from his “physical, mental and psychological injuries,” his sister, Amanda Wilcox-Summers, wrote on a GoFundMe page set up on the officer’s behalf.
The GBI is continuing to investigate the shooting and will provide its results to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office when they are complete.
The fundraiser, which has a target of $50,000, was created to help Wilcox pay for “extensive medical, physical and psychological treatment,” his sister said. He has been released from the hospital, but it’s not clear how long he was treated there.
“He also has living expenses and legal fees that pertain to his injuries that have poured in,” she added. Wilcox-Summers did not specify the reason for the legal fees.
Wilcox started his law enforcement career in 1993 with the GBI and became a special agent the next year, a position he held for a decade, according to the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council’s records. In 2004, Wilcox left the GBI and worked for several different local agencies before landing back at another state agency in 2011, Georgia’s Department of Juvenile Justice. He worked there until leaving for the Department of Corrections in 2015, where he worked until 2017, according to records.
Wilcox joined the Molena Police Department on Oct. 6, just weeks before his injury, according to POST records.
“I’d like to thank everyone for all the thoughts, prayers and donations for my brother and our family! It’s all been appreciated and will continue to be appreciated,” Wilcox’s sister wrote on the fundraising page. “Dan has an extremely long road ahead of him.”
— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.
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