While sitting in the back of a patrol car, Alexia Christian managed to free herself from handcuffs and pull out a gun that police didn’t know she had, authorities said. She fired three shots at two officers sitting in the front seat.
“Both of the officers missed getting killed by an inch,” said Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Darryl Tolleson told reporters Friday. “It’s a miracle they’re still alive.”
The unscathed officers leaped out of the car, parked outside an Underground Atlanta parking deck, and fired 10 bullets at the 26-year-old suspected car thief. She died Thursday after being transported to Grady Memorial Hospital.
It’s unclear how Christian escaped from the cuffs, but Police Chief George Turner said she had done it before, in 2006 when she was just 17. And, Turner said, it doesn’t appear the officers adequately patted Christian down, if at all.
Christian’s aunt, Djuanne Threet, said she doesn’t doubt her niece might have stolen the vehicle but can’t believe she would’ve shot at police.
“Something’s not right,” Threet told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She was all about her kids. She had too much to lose.”
Christian’s youngest son turned 3 on Friday, Threet said.
The two officers who fatally shot Christian — who had been arrested at least six times, including once after trying to steal a police car — are APD veterans with a combined quarter century of experience. Jeffery Cook, 53, and Omar Thyme, 33, have been placed on paid administrative leave until a internal probe is complete.
The biggest question facing the officers: How did Christian sneak a gun into the patrol car?
The weapon, according to the chief, was lifted from the pick-up truck Christian was alleged to have stolen Thursday from a parking lot on Fulton Industrial Boulevard.
It’s possible Christian could’ve concealed the gun — a Taurus .380 semi-automatic pistol, which weighs less than a pound — in a place where the male officers are forbidden by APD protocol to search, Turner said.
In such circumstances, a female officer is summoned to conduct a complete body search, but the chief said Cook and Thyme probably didn’t have a chance to request the back-up.
Surveillance cameras blanket the area where the shootings occurred, but the dash cam inside the patrol car likely did not record the incident since it was turned outside the vehicle, a police spokesman said.
State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, said all of the surveillance footage should be made public “immediately.”
“The atmosphere demands it,” Fort said. In March, two unarmed men were fatally shot by separate incidents by DeKalb and Smyrna police officers. And questions were raised last month when two APD officers shot a fleeing man seven times, primarily in the back.
“People need to know what happened,” Fort said. “If not, the question becomes why not release the evidence.”
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