A man who was on the run after being accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend in Douglas County died Tuesday morning after he turned his gun on himself as police closed in on him, officials said.
Harold Dakers, 34, was spotted by a 911 caller who saw him going into the woods in his hometown of Villa Rica, local police said. Officers responded to the area near Villa Trace and North Lassiter Street and began to search for Dakers.
When they found him next to a creek, Dakers pulled a handgun and began to run through the water, Villa Rica police said. The officers lost sight of him after he rounded a bend in the creek, then heard a gunshot, according to police. Dakers was found suffering from a self-inflicted wound and later died, authorities said.
Dakers had been arrested in June and charged with raping his ex-girlfriend, 29-year-old Kaleshia Lyons, according to court records. After he bonded out of jail in late October, he was accused of killing Lyons on Friday at her grandmother’s home in Lithia Springs, Douglas County Sheriff Tim Pounds said.
During a news conference Monday, Pounds said he believed Dakers was a threat to himself and law enforcement more than he was to the general public. Pounds also said investigators suspected Dakers had remained in the area, which proved correct.
Pounds said Lyons had moved from a home in Villa Rica to live with her grandmother after the June incident. Dakers was also charged in June with aggravated assault, theft by taking and false imprisonment, according to court records.
According to the indictment, Lyons told officers that Dakers had asked to have their son spend time with him for Father’s Day, which she allowed. The day Dakers was supposed to take their son out to eat, he called Lyons crying on the phone, she said. Worried about their son, she went to pick him up from Dakers’ house.
When Lyons arrived, she said Dakers was calm at first, “then he just snapped,” according to the indictment. He began demanding that Lyons unlock her phone and physically assaulted her, Lyons said. Dakers told her he wanted them to “be a family again” and that she could not leave until she agreed, according to the indictment. After Lyons agreed, she told the officer that Dakers forced himself on her and raped her.
In the indictment, Lyons said Dakers warned her not to go to the police or “he would bail out of jail and come find her.” Despite the threat, he was granted a $25,000 bond in Carroll County and was released from jail Oct. 25.
Less than two weeks later, Lyons was killed from blunt force trauma to the head and face, according to the Douglas sheriff’s office. She and Dakers are survived by their 7-year-old son.
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