Rayshard Brooks, the man shot and killed by Atlanta police after he fell asleep in a Wendy’s drive-thru line, died of gunshot wounds to the back, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said Sunday night.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Brooks’s autopsy showed that he suffered organ damage and blood loss from two gunshot wounds.
Multiple videos, including police body cam and dash cam footage and witness videos, show the entire sequence of events that led to Brooks’s death, as CrimeOnline has previously reported.
The shooting resulted in the firing of Garrett Rolfe, the officer who fired the fatal shots, and the resignation of Erika Shields as Atlanta police chief. The shooting also prompted intense protests in a city already rocked, along with other cities across the country, by protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Rolfe and Officer Devin Bronsan responded to a 911 about a man sleeping in his car in a Wendy’s drive-thru at about 10:30 p.m. on Friday. The interaction began calmly, but when Rolfe attempted to place Brooks under arrest, he bolted. The three men struggled, and Brooks wrestled Bronsan’s Taser from him and ran, with Rolfe in pursuit. Rolfe kept his own Taser aimed at Brooks as he reached to unholster his gun. Brooks fired Bronsan’s Taser over his shoulder at Rolfe, who fired three shots at Brooks, apparently striking him with two.
“His cause of death: gunshot wounds of the back,” an investigator from the medical examiner’s office told the Journal-Constitution.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident, as is the office of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, who released a statement on his web page earlier Sunday saying there were “several technical requirements that must be met” before he can make a decision about any charges against the officers. He said he was awaiting ballistics information and a preliminary report from the medical examiner and planned to interview more witnesses.
He said he hoped to make a decision “midweek.”
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[Featured image: Rayshard Brooks/Facebook]
