SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – A Georgia state trooper was fired and charged with murder Friday a week after he shot a 60-year-old man who tried to flee a rural traffic stop, authorities said.
The president of Georgia’s NAACP chapter called the slaying of Julian Edward Roosevelt Lewis another chilling example of a Black man being killed unlawfully by a white law enforcement officer. An attorney for Lewis’ family said the trooper initiated the traffic stop over a burned-out tail light and Lewis was shot almost immediately after the trooper 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 said that information was given to the family by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which arrested 27-year-old Jacob Gordon Thompson on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault Friday. The agency did not include those details in its own statement on Thompson’s arrest.
The GBI said Lewis was fatally shot Aug. 7 after a chase in rural Screven County, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) northwest of Savannah.