Lizella couple’s attacker shot dead by cops had burned Bible, destroyed Jesus figure

A Bibb County sheriff’s SWAT team member was justified in shooting and killing a man who had barricaded himself inside a Lizella house last month after stabbing, choking and beating a neighbor to death, the district attorney said Friday.

The episode played out over the course of a couple of hours the afternoon of April 25 on Moncrief Road, south of Lake Tobesofkee and a few miles west of Interstate 475.

Gavin Williams, 27, who was shot and killed by Bibb sheriff’s deputy Alex Rozier, had earlier attacked Vivian and Sanders Hughes.

The husband and wife, who lived up the road from Williams, saw him ransacking a nearby house, Bibb District Attorney David Cooke said.

Cooke said Williams, who suffered from schizophrenia, had hallucinations and wasn’t taking his medicine, was “destroying property” and “not acting stable.” The DA said that while Williams was on his rampage inside the house he was tearing up, Williams set fire to a Bible, smashed a figure of Jesus and ripped out an attic door.

Then Williams apparently noticed the Hugheses watching him and, unprovoked, attacked them, Cooke said.

Vivian Hughes, 70, was beaten, stomped, stabbed and choked to death.

Sanders Hughes, 72, severely hurt in the clash, is now thought to be recovering from his injuries.

Cooke said Williams, who stood 6-foot-4 and weighed more than 250 pounds, was “combative” and all but unstoppable that day.

Williams tried a hit a sheriff’s deputy with a liquor bottle when the deputy arrived to help the beaten couple. Williams, shot with a Taser and pepper sprayed, was unfazed. He snatched the Taser’s hook-tipped wires out of his skin, marched back to his own house and barricaded himself inside alone.

He hung up when negotiators tried to call him and tried to grab one of the robots the SWAT team sent in to check on him, Cooke said. Williams flung a television and a DVD player out a window trying to crush another tactical robot.

During the standoff, one of Williams’ relatives called 911 and warned the police to be careful, that Williams was “violent and unpredictable.”

At the end of the standoff, deputies used tear gas to flush Williams from the house. He came out armed with a knife, ignoring three separate warnings to drop it, Cooke said.

A sheriff’s deputy fired less-than-lethal bean bags at him with a .12-gauge shotgun, but Williams didn’t stop, Cooke said, so deputy Rozier shot Williams “several times” with a Colt AR-15 rifle. The bullets hit Williams in the chest. He later died at a hospital.

Cooke said the shooting, “while tragic, was justified,” and that it happened “only after every other means ... proved fruitless.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Lizella couple’s attacker shot dead by cops had burned Bible, destroyed Jesus figure."