A Lawrenceville police officer was shot late Wednesday while responding to a call about an unruly hospital patient, the GBI said.
Around 10:40 p.m., a caller requested officers’ help with a patient at the Summit Ridge Behavioral Health Hospital on Scenic Highway. When officers arrived, the patient, 20-year-old Austin Collins, was in a fenced area behind the hospital, the GBI said.
“Collins attacked one of the officers and took his handgun,” the GBI said in an emailed statement. “Collins was shot by a second officer.”
One officer, whose name was not released, was shot. The officer and Collins were taken to Northside Gwinnett Hospital, where Collins was in critical condition, the GBI said. The officer was stable.
Lawrenceville police requested the GBI to investigate the officer-involved shooting, the 24th such case the state agency has opened this year. It was the second shooting involving a metro Atlanta officer within about four hours.
Shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday, police in Acworth shot and killed a man after discovering him in the garage of a home armed with two knives, officials said. The officers were responding to a burglary in progress on Lake Park Ridge West at about 6:50 p.m. when they encountered the man, identified by the GBI as 35-year-old Gabriel Scott Rau.
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.
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