Suspect in Rossville police shootout at large
ROSSVILLE, Ga. — Investigators are looking for a man who exchanged gunfire with two deputies, ran into a home under construction and bolted into the woods.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said the unidentified man emptied his automatic .45 during the shootout Tuesday afternoon, but he did not hit the two deputies. At least one of the deputies’ shots, however, hit the suspect. He dropped his gun and left behind a trail of blood.
But Wilson warned the man may still have another gun.
“We consider [him] armed and dangerous,” the sheriff said.
Before the shooting, the man drove a Hyundai Sonata on Raydine Lane when a deputy tried to stop him at 2:28 p.m. Wilson said the man’s window was tinted illegally, and he failed to signal when he made a turn in the neighborhood, located near James Street and Wilson Road.
Wilson said the man drove about a block, stopped and let his passenger out of the car. He then whipped through a left and right turn and drove behind the neighborhood, down a path that led to a construction site where three people were working on a home. A second deputy joined the chase.
Wilson said the deputies got out of their vehicles, and the man opened fire. The deputies fired back. When the man’s gun was empty, Wilson said, he dropped it and ran into the house. Before deputies could reach him, he ran into the woods. Though the pilot of a Georgia State Patrol helicopter flew over the location, investigators had not found the man as of press time Tuesday. Deputies were also looking for the passenger, who was also not identified as of press time.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is looking into the circumstances of the shooting. Wilson told the Times Free Press he was not sure if anything was in the man’s vehicle that would have motivated him to drive away from the deputies.
“This is a very lucky day for our department that they did not get struck and injured,” Wilson said. “In this season of Thanksgiving, I’m very thankful.”
Robert Barnes, who lives at the end of Raydine Lane, said he heard a police siren blaring outside Tuesday afternoon. When he looked out the window, he saw a car slam on its brakes. The patrol car then screeched to a stop, almost hitting the man’s car. He said the passenger got out, and the suspect kept driving. The deputy shouted something at the passenger before driving away, leaving the passenger in a neighbor’s front yard.
“He just walked away like nothing was going on,” Barnes said.
About 30 seconds later, a second patrol car sped by his
house in the same direction. He heard a crash in the woods. Men shouted at each other. He heard rapid shots pump out from a couple of guns.
“It sounded like a war,” he said.
Dozens of cars, trucks and ambulances arrived in the neighborhood minutes later.
About three hours after the shooting, Wilson said that 41-year-old Robert Dean Root was a person of interest in the shooting. He also said John A. Ross III was the passenger. But the sheriff retracted that statement Tuesday night, after Georgia Department of Corrections officers found Root at Lee State Prison in Leesburg, Georgia, where he is serving a sentence on multiple drug and gun charges in Catoosa and Walker counties.
Wilson said the owner of the vehicle used in the chase told investigators that Root and Ross had driven her car that day. Officers later found Ross and arrested him on a violation of probation charge. But, he said, they have not found any evidence he was involved in the car chase.
“We got to shake her down, find out why she lied to us, why she sent us on a wild goose chase,” Wilson said of the car’s owner. “… We’re dealing with that now.”