A man was killed during a shootout with sheriff’s deputies in northwest Georgia on Monday night, according to the GBI.
Whitfield County deputies were sent to an area near the intersection of U.S. 41 and Westgate Drive in Rocky Face around 11:30 p.m. after receiving multiple 911 calls about a shooting, the GBI said. At the scene, which was near a post office, deputies made contact with Steven Ray Bailey, 63, of Rocky Face, who was armed.
Bailey negotiated with the deputies for “several minutes,” the GBI said, before he began firing at them with a handgun. The deputies returned fire and hit the man several times.
After shooting Bailey, deputies rendered first aid and he was taken to Hamilton Medical Center. Once there, he was pronounced dead. His body will be taken to the GBI Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.
No one else was injured, the GBI said.
The incident is the 60th officer-involved shooting the GBI has been asked to investigate this year, matching the pace of law enforcement shootings from 2020 in Georgia. It is the fourth such shooting during August and the first in Whitfield in 2021.
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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