A 50-year-old Coweta County man who inserted himself into a fight between several teenagers in 2020 and ultimately stabbed three of them was found guilty on multiple charges, officials said Thursday.
Christopher Kendall Rush of Newnan was sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by 13 years of probation after he was found guilty at the completion of his trial June 30, Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herb Cranford said. Rush claimed he used his knife on the teens in self-defense, but according to Cranford, the jury rejected that idea and found him guilty on all charges.
Two of the victims, sisters who were 18 and 19 years old at the time, suffered serious knife wounds, Cranford said. The 19-year-old was slashed across the chest and sustained serious blood loss, while the 18-year-old still has nerve damage from her stab wound. Cranford did not describe the injuries of the third victim, who was also 18 at the time.
The incident took place on July 14, 2020, when a family member called Rush to tell him his niece was about to fight another girl in the relative’s front yard, according to a news release. Cranford said Rush immediately threw himself into the knot of teens, screaming in the face of a 16-year-old girl and throwing a punch at one of the 18-year-old victims. Prosecutors had video of the beginning of the incident, which turned into a brawl once Rush punched the recent graduate of Troup County High School.
Rush then pulled a knife and slashed at several of the teens, injuring three and eventually breaking his blade. Cranford said investigators recovered the broken knife but found no other weapons.
During his trial, Rush claimed another person involved in the fight initially took his knife, which he was forced to recover before stabbing the three victims, Cranford said. The jury did not accept Rush’s version of events, and Cranford explained why the defendant’s actions were not legally justified.
“Under Georgia law, a person is not justified in using force if he is the initial aggressor or if he agrees to combat,” Cranford said. “Additionally, under Georgia law, even if someone is justified in the use of force, he cannot resort to deadly force, or force likely to result in serious injury, unless he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily harm to himself or others.”
Rush fled the scene before police arrived but was arrested two days later in North Carolina. The mother of the two sisters appeared at Rush’s sentencing hearing and provided emotional testimony while asking for a lengthy sentence, Cranford said.
“It should be without question that a 50-year-old man should be a source of calm when teenagers are behaving badly,“ Cranford said. “Rather than stop a fight between teenagers from occurring, this defendant joined the fray, threw a punch, then escalated the fight to a potentially deadly encounter by producing a knife.”
Rush was found guilty on three counts of aggravated assault, three counts of aggravated battery and six counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a felony.
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