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| Photo Credit: AP. |
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Authorities charged a man with murder Friday in the killing of two sheriff’s deputies serving an arrest warrant on another person outside a suburban home near Atlanta.
Cobb County
Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer told reporters at a news conference that the
deputies were attempting to arrest a man wanted on theft charges in the
driveway of his home Thursday night when another man inside confronted them
with a gun.
A shootout
ensued when the armed man refused commands to drop his weapon, VanHoozer said,
and both deputies were fatally wounded. The shooting suspect and the man with
the outstanding warrant were both arrested following a standoff with officers
who swarmed the neighborhood.
The two
slain deputies were identified Friday as 42-year-old Jonathan Koleski and
38-year-old Marshall Ervin.
“They were
outstanding men, men of character and integrity, family men loved by their
families and their kids,” Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens told a news
conference.
Both men
arrested at the scene made initial court appearances Friday afternoon.
Christopher
Golden, 30, was charged with two counts of felony murder and two counts of
aggravated assault against law enforcement officers. Christopher Cook, 32,
wasn’t charged in the killings. But he was booked on six outstanding theft
charges.
VanHoozer
declined to give specifics of what happened during the standoff that ended with
the two men arrested, the home’s front door out of its frame and windows
broken. He did say there was no more gunfire after the deputies were shot and no
other officers were injured.
The sheriff
had previously told reporters his deputies had been “ambushed.” On Friday
afternoon, he deferred questions about the shootings to the county police
chief, whose agency is conducting the investigation.
VanHoozer
said police had tried to be forthcoming with what they knew during an “unfolding
investigation” in which they still had limited information.
Asked if he
would call the shootings an ambush, VanHoozer said: “What I’ve just given you
are facts. I’m not going to label it.”
Sprawling
Cobb County, with more than 760,000 people, is just northwest of Atlanta and
one of Georgia’s most populous counties.