The GBI is investigating a Walton County deputy who reported his girlfriend killed herself with a pistol he handed her after an argument, Sheriff Joe Chapman said Wednesday.
Deputy Dwight William Buchanan, 20, told authorities his girlfriend Nikki Guined shot herself while they were in bed Dec. 10 after asking for him to give her the pistol, saying, “Don’t you trust me,” Deputy J. Ricks wrote in his report.
Buchanan said the two were arguing at the house on Brentwood Boulevard in Monroe. Initially she warned she would be “leaving him” later in the morning but they reconciled in the wee hours, the report said.
That is when Guined, 20, asked for the 9mm-Glock pistol. Buchanan reported to Ricks he was reluctant to give it to her. Eventually he agreed but withdrew the magazine so the gun would be unloaded.
Guined repeatedly asked Buchanan to load the weapon and he eventually chambered one round and returned the pistol to her, the report said.
“She then placed the muzzle under her right jaw and pulled the trigger,” Ricks wrote.
Buchanan had been employed as a jailer for 13 months and had good record, but the facts of the case still raised concern, Chapman said.
“That is why we’re having the GBI look at this,” Chapman said. “We want to make sure everything is …transparent and I want the family of the girl to know we are doing everything we can so they don’t have any questions.”
Chapman said it is still not clear whether the shooting was accidental. He understood that the pistol was a present for Guined. Buchanan might have not realized that Glock pistol will fire when the magazine is absent because other types of semi-automatic pistols will not, Chapman said.
The house was strewn with beer cans, according to the report. Buchanan told Ricks that Guined had been drinking but the report says nothing about his alcohol consumption. It does say he could not remember the basis of the argument.
Three other people were in the house but Ricks said they only reported hearing the gunshot, not the argument.
Buchanan is on paid administrative leave. If the GBI does not bring criminal charges, the sheriff’s office will do an internal investigation of Buchanan’s conduct, Chapman said.
“We’ll look at all the evidence and all the facts and we will determine what his future holds,” the sheriff said.
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