An armed man suspected of burglarizing a Calhoun business was shot and killed by police Thursday morning when he allegedly pointed his rifle at officers, the GBI said.
The fatal shooting is the second involving law enforcement in Gordon County in the past 10 days, according to the GBI. The prior incident took place Jan. 24 and involved a Gordon County sheriff’s deputy.
Thursday’s incident began around 2 a.m. when a Calhoun police officer saw a car parked in front of Battlefield Building Supply on U.S. 41, then noticed that the glass door of the business had been smashed, the GBI said. Once additional officers and deputies arrived, a group of officers entered the building and found 21-year-old Daniel Tang of New Jersey inside with a rifle.
The officers told Tang “for several minutes” to drop his weapon, the GBI said. He did not comply and instead pointed his rifle at the officers, according to the GBI. The officers opened fire on Tang, hitting him.
He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the GBI said.
The GBI will conduct an independent investigation at the request of Calhoun police. It’s the 13th officer-involved shooting the state agency has been asked to probe this year.
Relatively few details have been released about the prior week’s incident, when a Gordon deputy attempted to stop a driver for a broken tag light, according to the GBI’s initial investigation. The man, identified as 51-year-old Billy Dewayne Couch, did not stop and drove to his home in the small community of Sugar Valley with the deputy in pursuit.
The deputy blocked in Couch’s vehicle behind the house and told him to show his hands, the GBI said. Instead, Couch got out of the vehicle as the deputy continued to give him commands, according to the GBI.
Officials have not shared any details about what happened next. According to Gordon Sheriff Mitch Ralston, the deputy shot Couch in the process of arresting him. Couch was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound but died. The deputy was not injured.
According to the GBI, the Gordon sheriff’s office does not require its officers to wear body cameras. Some footage of the attempted traffic stop and pursuit was captured by the deputy’s dashboard camera in his patrol car, but the shooting took place out of the dashcam’s view, the GBI said. The camera captured some audio from the incident, the GBI added.
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