Two officer-involved shooting investigations closed
Two more cases from 2016 remain under investigation
Investigations are continuing in two of four officer-involved shooting incidents that happened since July 2016 in the rural Tennessee and Alabama counties west of Chattanooga, officials said.
In Tennessee, three people died in officer-involved shootings in the 12th Judicial District in Tennessee — two in Franklin County and one in Marion County — since last July.
In Alabama, a Pisgah High School senior was killed by police gunfire at a County Road 60 home in Jackson County last month.
Susan Niland, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said one of the three recent Tennessee cases is closed while two others are ongoing investigations, but she did not discuss details.
Twelfth Judicial District Attorney General Mike Taylor said Tuesday the now-closed case stems from a July 27, 2016, shooting in Estill Springs, Tenn., in which 33-year-old Michael Adams ran from police and led them on a short pursuit that ended after Adams drove into a mobile home park and then ran.
Authorities said Adams pulled out a knife and “came toward the deputy,” who shot and killed him.
Taylor said evidence in that case was presented to the Franklin County grand jury, which decided not to issue an indictment.
The other officer-involved shooting in Franklin County on Jan. 5 left 40-yearold Randy Wayne Cole, of
Antioch, Tenn., dead in an incident on Deepwoods Road on Monteagle Mountain that involved Franklin County deputies and police from Monteagle and Sewanee. Cole was shot multiple times after firing on officers, investigators said.
On Tuesday, Taylor said that investigation is still active.
The other active investigation in the 12th Judicial District began in Whiteside, Tenn., on Dec. 27, 2016, when a man there drove his car toward Marion County sheriff’s deputies who opened fire on him.
Taylor said 59-year-old William John Berner was struck once by gunfire, but an autopsy showed he died of injuries sustained when his Ford F-350 pickup truck slammed into a railroad bridge just yards away from the home where the incident began.
The gunshot was not lethal, Taylor said.
In Jackson County, Ala., officials have finished the investigation into the Feb. 7 officer-involved shooting of 18-year-old Pisgah High School senior Alex Christopher Davis, who was killed by a county sheriff’s office deputy at a home where he’d beaten a man with a garden tool handle and where, when authorities arrived, he was beating the windows out of a car.
Jackson County authorities said in the days after the incident that the deputy fired both cartridges from his stun gun. Davis then pulled the stun gun prongs from his skin and charged at the deputy with a 3-foot-long board, and the deputy fired his service weapon in self-defense, killing the teen.
Officials in Jackson County District Attorney Jason R. Pierce’s office said the Pisgah shooting investigation has been concluded and the evidence was presented to the Jackson County grand jury last week.
The grand jury did not issue an indictment, and the investigation has been closed, officials said.
Alex Davis pulled the stun gun prongs from his skin and charged at the deputy with a 3-footlong board, and the deputy fired his weapon in self-defense, killing the teen, according to Jackson County officers.