Georgia investigators are tapping Facebook to determine whether the man accused of killing an Athens policeman last week also killed a public works employee three months ago, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.
Jamie Hood, 33, surrendered to police on live television Friday, ending a four-day hunt for the man suspected of shooting Senior Police Officer Elmer "Buddy" Christian to death and wounding Senior Police Officer Tony Howard.
The shootings occurred after a reported kidnapping earlier that day. Judon Antron Brooks, 31, escaped from a car trunk in which he'd been tossed, with his wrists and feet bound. He then told police that Hood and several others had kidnapped him, which led to the violent encounter between Hood and the two officers, authorities said.
After Hood's arrest, Assistant Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Tim Smith told the Banner-Herald that Brooks knew Kenneth Omari Wray, an Athens-Clarke Transportation and Public Works employee who was shot to death Dec. 28. Brooks and another person told investigators that Wray, 30, received threatening Facebook messages before he was killed, the newspaper reported.
Investigators plan to conduct ballistics tests on bullets that killed Wray and those fired at the officers to see if they came from the same gun, and they have obtained cellphone records so they can see whom Wray spoke with before he was killed, according to the Banner-Herald.
They've also inspected Wray's Facebook account -- including deleted wall postings and private messages -- to see if they could identify anyone who threatened him, the newspaper reported.
"Wray recently informed [his girlfriend] and Judon Brooks that someone had posted or sent a threatening message to Wray's wall through his Facebook page," a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent said in a search warrant application, according to the Banner-Herald. The warrant application said investigators who inspected Wray's Facebook account didn't find any threats. The application asked the social networking company to supply any deleted information.
The Facebook information was "imperative to the investigation to assist law enforcement in locating any enemies that Wray may have had," the investigator wrote.
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