A man who fired on a Hall County deputy was killed Tuesday night when the deputy returned fire, sheriff’s officials said.
The deputy encountered 25-year-old Javier Manuel Solo while investigating a vehicle stopped in the middle of F. Gilmer Road in a rural area of northeastern Hall County. According to the sheriff’s office, a 911 caller reported the vehicle just before 9:45 p.m.
“When a Hall County Sheriff’s Office deputy arrived at the scene to investigate, he found a man and a woman standing outside of the vehicle,” the agency said in a news release. “During the course of the investigation, the male subject pulled a weapon, firing a shot at the deputy. The deputy returned fire, striking the man and killing him.”
Solo was later identified by the GBI. Agents determined the Gainesville man fired multiple times on the deputy, hitting him once in his duty belt. The deputy also fired multiple times, GBI officials said in a news release.
The woman ran into a wooded area after the shooting, officials said. Deputies responding as backup found her a short time later, and she was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
It was not clear why the two were stopped in their vehicle.
The GBI has taken the lead on the investigation, the 97th officer-involved shooting case the state agency has opened this year.
It was the second such shooting reported Tuesday, coming hours after another deadly incident in Midtown Atlanta.
According to Atlanta police, an officer in plain clothes shot and killed a man after trying to intervene in a road-rage incident shortly after 8 p.m. The officer was on patrol in the area of West Peachtree and 16th streets and saw a woman thrown from the hood of a white Mercedes-Benz as its driver tried to pull away.
“The plain-clothes officer tried to have the driver stop, and then while he stopped there was some type of verbal altercation that escalated where the officer discharged their weapon,” Atlanta police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said.
The driver, identified by the GBI as 35-year-old James Wilborn, later died at a hospital. Hampton said he and the 30-year-old woman knew each other and were driving separate cars before the woman climbed on Wilborn’s Mercedes.
She was stable and being treated at a hospital Tuesday.
Credit: WSBTV Videos
The GBI investigated 100 officer-involved shootings in all of 2021.
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