A Georgia state trooper was arrested and charged with murder on Friday after he fatally shot a 60-year-old man who allegedly tried to flee during a rural traffic stop.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced that Jacob Gordon Thompson, 27, was booked on felony murder and aggravated assault charges stemming from the Aug. 7 death of Julian Edward Roosevelt Lewis.
An attorney for Lewis’s family told The Associated Press that Thompson initiated the traffic stop in Screven County over a burned-out tail light, shooting Lewis immediately after the trooper had forced his car into a ditch.
“Mr. Lewis never got out of the vehicle and the investigation will show that, mere seconds after the crash, he was shot to death, shot in the face and killed,” attorney Francys Johnson said.
Johnson told the outlet that the GBI disclosed that information to the family, but the agency did not include those details in its statement on the trooper’s arrest.
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