Armed man killed by police on I-75 in Macon had early dementia, nephew says
A relative of an armed man who was shot and killed by the police during a roadside encounter along Interstate 75 in north Macon on Wednesday night said the man was in the early stages of dementia.
Law enforcement officials have said that Steven Lewis Finfrock, 63, of Titusville, Florida, was mortally wounded after he fired gunshots from inside his late-model Chevrolet Camaro and then stepped out of the car and aimed a gun at police officers.
What set the life-ending events in motion remains a mystery. Investigators have not publicly commented on whether Finfrock, described by one official as a disabled veteran, had been diagnosed with any medical condition that may have been a factor.
The incident Wednesday clogged traffic for hours on the freeway’s northbound lanes below Bass Road, where Finfrock was said to have pulled over along the highway’s shoulder sometime around 7 p.m.
Officers from the Georgia State Patrol along with Bibb County sheriff’s deputies stopped to check on Finfrock and the fatal episode unfolded.
A nephew of Finfrock’s who lives near Dayton in Finfrock’s native Ohio told The Telegraph that his uncle may have been heading to Atlanta to visit a niece. But why he had stopped on the side of the interstate is anyone’s guess.
“He’s got the early stages of dementia, so I don’t know what he was doing,” the nephew, Josh Finfrock, said by phone Thursday.
Steve Finfrock bought a house in Titusville, along Florida’s Atlantic coast, about three years ago.
“I talked to him and me and my girlfriend were gonna drive down there and go down to the Keys and I was gonna swing by (his place) in a few months,” said Josh Finfrock, whose father is Steve Finfrock’s brother. “He was like, ‘Yeah, come on down.’”
“But like I said, he’s going through the early stages of dementia and he would call me about three or four times a day — not knowing or remembering he called me 20 minutes ago,” the nephew recalled.
Josh Finfrock said his uncle, one of seven siblings, may have been considering moving back to the Dayton area where his uncle was from.
“I know he was getting lonely down there. He wanted to have us come down there and help him move back up here,” the nephew said. “But he was only talking about that.”
Josh Finfrock said word of the scenario surrounding his uncle’s death came as a shock when the coroner in Macon called to break the bad news.
“I was like, ‘He did what?’” the nephew said. “It just blows my mind.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 10:23 AM.