No one believed struck after Gwinnett deputy fires at car

Authorities don’t believe anyone was struck when a Gwinnett County sheriff’s deputy fired at a car driving through the front yard of a home Monday night.

Gwinnett County police spokeswoman Cpl. Michele Pihera said Gwinnett and Walton County deputies were at the home at 4960 Braselton Highway around 6 p.m. Monday night to serve a misdemeanor warrant for a female resident. When authorities arrived, however, they encountered a car outside the home.

That car, occupied by an unknown number of people, reportedly drove to the rear of the home and back around to the front yard. As the car approached them, the deputies “felt their lives were in jeopardy” and a Gwinnett County deputy fired a single shot at the vehicle, Pihera said.

The car drove off.

Around 9 p.m., police received a phone call from a resident of Bill Cheek Road in Auburn, about a mile away from the shooting location. Responding authorities found a white Ford Escape with a “visible bullet hole in the front of the vehicle,” Pihera said.

Officials confirmed that it was the same vehicle at the scene on Braselton Highway.

“Because of the absence of blood, the investigators do not believe that anyone was struck by the bullet,” Pihera said. “Inside the home (on Bill Cheek Road) was a female occupant of the vehicle.”

That woman was taken into custody. Charges filed against her were unclear late Monday night.

“The detective in this case has good leads as to the identities of the other two individuals that were inside the vehicle,” Pihera said.

The woman originally being sought by deputies was taken into custody at the home on Braselton Highway, Pihera said.

The shooting incident, which is being investigated by the Gwinnett County Police Department at the request of the sheriff’s office, is the third involving a Gwinnett law enforcement officer in less than a week.