Cops justified in killing man who attacked wife, rammed squad cars, Bibb DA says
A Macon high school teacher and coach who was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies in mid-May as he sped toward them in his pickup truck, had, hours earlier in an apparent rage after being served divorce papers, tied up his wife and told her his life was over, investigators now say.
The authorities have since learned that the teacher, Keith Young, 30, may have fired two shots toward neighbors and cops as he raced up a street near his family’s house off Houston Road at more than 50 mph.
It was then that deputies opened fire as Young roared toward them in his Ford F-150, plowing into the back of a patrol car.
Young, who taught and coached at the Academy for Classical Education, a north Macon charter school, for the past couple of years, died of a single gunshot wound.
District attorney summarizes investigation
Details of Young’s May 19 death in the south Bibb County subdivision off Houston Road where he had lived on Bob White Road emerged Monday in a statement from District Attorney David Cooke.
Cooke said he had reviewed preliminary findings in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s initial report into the deputies’ use of deadly force and determined the officers were justified in the shooting and that they would not face charges.
Cooke said investigators’ conversations with numerous people revealed that Young had threatened suicide “several times” since last fall.
The DA said Young had, not long before his death, been hospitalized after holding a gun to his head and threatening to kill himself.
Young, he said, had been discharged from a hospital a couple of weeks before the shooting.
A violent evening
In describing the deadly episode, which began playing out shortly before 6 o’clock on the evening of May 19, Cooke said that Young attacked his wife after he was informed divorce proceedings were in the works.
“Mr. Young found his wife, physically assaulted her and tied her to a bed, telling her that it didn’t matter what happened to him because his life was over anyway,” Cooke said.
Young then took the couple’s three children to a relative’s house.
He was at some point said to have called his father-in-law in and told him “if you don’t shoot me, I’ll shoot you,” Cooke said. It wasn’t clear whether the two men encountered one another afterward.
About 90 minutes after leaving his wife tied up, Young was seen in his red pickup cruising back into the couple’s neighborhood just south of Sardis Church Road in a development between Interstate 75 and Middle Georgia Regional Airport.
Young’s wife had by then untied herself and gone to a neighbor’s house on a street nearby. It was there that three sheriff’s deputies had arrived to check on her and be on the lookout for Young, who was said to have a handgun with him.
‘Force to choose’
Sheriff’s deputy David Dunn, Sgt. De’Lana Calhoun and Lt. Leon Houston were parked along a street which runs in front of the neighbor’s house where Young’s wife had gone for help.
When they saw Young coming their way, Cooke said, the deputies were “forced to choose between being killed or responding with deadly force.”
Cooke said that Young “intentionally” zoomed toward the cops “in an attempt to either murder them or to force them to respond with deadly force so that his suicidal ideations would be carried out.”
The DA said that at first Young had eased toward the deputies but soon, as witnesses would report, they heard Young “gun the engine.”
Investigators later learned that Young accelerated from 21 mph to 52 mph in a matter of seconds as he closed in on the deputies and their patrol cars.
Deputies Houston and Dunn fired shots at Young as he hurtled toward them and plowed into the back of Houston’s Dodge Charger.
The impact rammed the Charger into the back of Calhoun’s squad car, throwing her from the car and wedging Houston’s Charger beneath her car’s rear axle.
Investigators said Young had never touched his brakes.
It wasn’t clear which deputy may have fired the fatal shot that killed Young.
“It’s tragic that this incident resulted in Mr. Young’s death,” Cooke said. “I’m glad Sgt. Calhoun’s injuries weren’t more severe and that no one else was injured.”