Deputies Killed Georgia
Cobb County law enforcement investigate the scene of a shooting, Friday morning, Sept. 9, 2022 Two deputies were killed while attempting to serve a warrant at a home in a suburb near Atlanta, a sheriff said Friday. (John Spink /Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

From the 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.

Both men were denied bond. It was not immediately known if they had attorneys.

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.”

 

73 COMMENTS

  1. “…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.”

    Oh?

    A man, defending his… man?

    • People need to view the link posted below in the comments with the mugshots. One of the guys definitely looks like a meth tweaker with his open sores on his face, which means he was probably agitated and paranoid when the cops showed up, regardless of why they were there.

  2. This saddens me. Those deputies were older and just after a thief. There was a time when no one would dare shoot a deputy. The media has caused this with the never ending narrative that the police will kill in an instant, especially those of a certain demographic. The FBI stats say different.

    • Can’t imagine a scenario where a no knock was justified but only involved 2 officers. Need more details but would guess either a result of the later standoff to arrest or preexisting damage.

  3. These two criminals have been told for years now that the cops were there to execute them. The Libertarians Liberals and the Left have all said the police are evil. And the number of cops being murdered on the job has been going up.

    Unfortunately the cops are now doing only the “easy” jobs. The “hard work” of cops, shooting rioters dead on sight is no longer done in America. They just follow orders and stand down.
    These two deputies would still be alive, if the property owner was allowed to shoot these criminals dead on sight. For stealing from him.

    • The police have been at war with the American people for decades. All because of big government progressives like yourself. You love telling other people how to live and use these overpaid, pampered, snowflake with badges as your attack dogs.

      The American people have every right to be armed and these government thugs had no business telling the citizen to disarm. NOT GUILTY on all charges.

      • Theft is still illegal in most of America. There are a few progressive places that encourage theft and drug use due to little or no repercussions. How’s that been working out? You don’t have the freedom to steal my stuff and have your buddy shoot the cops when they come to arrest you.

        • A new type of citizen is being created. The “Methican” American. They come in many different skin colors. And they want “free stuff” from the government.

          They are very reliable democrat and Libertarian voters.

      • The police had no right to tell a guy confronting them with a gun (while they’re conducting an apparently legitimate arrest) to disarm???

      • What? Where did you get that nonsense from? The FBI has turned into a Fascist tool of the Administration but the police by and large are men and woman doing a thankless job trying to keep the peace and keep crime at bay.

  4. Going by their histories of petty thefts and fraud I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they’re doped up tweaking morons.

    So here we have druggies with housing. Didn’t seem to help them.

    Decriminalization, legalization, whatever is all well and good but sooner or later these people are.going to have to find cash to feed the habit and getting a job is a non-starter since they’re drugged up tweaking morons who can’t do anything.

    Ship these people to San Francisco the way Texas is shipping border crossers to sanctuary cities? Seems like a plan. They want more of it so give them more of it.

  5. I feel sick. I can’t even imagine being a LEO today. They never know what fckn maniac is gonna turn on them. Peace officer shouldn’t mean Rest in Peace.

    • Despite what you see in the news violent crime in this country is nearly at historical lows despite the rates rising over the past few years. The number one killer of police officers every single year is traffic fatalities but they’ve monkeyed with the numbers a little bit recently because of covid. You can check out the http://www.odmp.org if you want to see who gets killed in the line of duty and how they are killed in the United States. They have records going back to the 1600s.

      • That’s like saying life expectancy is at historical highs so we shouldn’t concern ourselves with a sudden decline in life expectancy.

        • Dude

          Violent crime is almost at the same level today as it was during the Eisenhower administration outside of 26 very select ZIP codes in the US and you want to know what the demographics of those zip codes are? Some demographics need the boot of police on their neck to keep them from killing one another and once politics make that boot on their neck no longer possible then they’re pretty much free to do to each other what they want to do and that is what is happening now. More officers died per year in the 1960s then die today and our population is more than double today. Everyone just wants to run around crying about how the sky is falling. The real problem in America is not a racial problem but instead it is a problem race of whom a very small minority cause the majority of the problems. The declared war on some drugs hasn’t helped things out either.

        • “The real problem in America…is a problem race…”

          If that were the case then we would see an increase in this “problem race” that coincides with the increase in violent crime. Since we aren’t seeing that, then the problem isn’t the race. It’s something else.

        • Dude.

          The rise in crime coming from what I describe as the problem race coincides with the reduction in policing of said problem race. Like I said before, some people just need a boot on their neck or they will not behave.

    • What a joke. Based on annual fatalities, the simple act of *driving* is the most dangerous aspect of being a cop

  6. Just wanted to say a hearty “FUCK YOU” to the piece of shit TTAG moderator who deleted my comments. Pure fucking scum you are, constantly whining about your Second Amendment rights being violated by those mean old libruls while you yourselves shit all over the First Amendment rights of those in your comment sections. Again, PURE FUCKING SCUM.

  7. This isn’t how it typically goes down. I wonder if the deputies were in uniform or plain clothes? Typically a deputy is going to be in uniform. It’s very odd that the sheriff is describing the engagement as an ambush when the officers had time to give the man commands to drop his weapon. Is there a possibility that the killer didn’t realize they were deputies or didn’t believe them when they identified themselves? Only time will tell.

    • Yeah, I had a similar thought. Then again, police would never lie to cover up a lethal mistake, right?

      (/sarc)

  8. Condolences and sympathies for the families, friends and fellow officers/deputies of these men.
    At least this happened in a state where the perps will be held and face trial instead of being given court dates and not bother showing up.

    • I think you meant if he’s found guilty put one in his ear hole unless you advocate for executing innocent men just because you don’t happen to like what they were charged with. By the way, our exhaustive and long appeals process in capital cases is the only reason capital punishment is still legal in the United States. It was considered unconstitutional for a good stretch of time and only when the supreme Court laid down the circumstances where it would be permissible did it become legal again.

  9. It wasnt an ambush. It was a gunfight that both sides were prepared for and the police lost even thought they had the upper hand with body armor, training, equipment, weapons, and numbers (two cops vs one shooter).

    He’s just butthurt two of his cops lost against a single criminal adversary. He is embarrassed and called it an ambush because he wants it to sound like the cops never had a chance and it was a surprise sneak attack, instead of a gunfight with the 2 cops getting their asses handed to them by one single dumb untrained criminal.

    • If he had a rifle the body armor meant nothing, as police don’t wear plates. Also, if he had a rifle, he had the upper hand in terms of weapons and equipment.

      It’s often not understood just how much more effective rifle is above pistols and shot guns both.

      Here on TTAG you often see writers and commenters with real world experience express this, and they are right.

      Now, if he didn’t use a rifle, and was able to drop to armed officers using only a pistol, I’d certainly want to see exactly how that occurred.

      • The alleged tactical superiority of a rifle is extremely dependant on the range of the engagement and the skill of the shooter. A proud graduate of the spray and pray school of gun fighting armed with an AR-15 is at an extreme disadvantage against a skilled shooter armed with a semiautomatic pistol or even a revolver at normal gun fighting ranges.

  10. In these situations I’m always a little suspicious of the police actions. An arrest warrant is not a search and enter warrant, unless the officer saw him in there through a window or saw him go in. Lacking any of that, if they got a door slammed in their faces and told to kick rocks and they kicked the door in unlawfully, I could see how it could have gone wrong and went down.

    Police are very keen at hiding or obscuring facts to favor the perception or image of what actually happened. I’m not saying they did anything wrong as we don’t know exactly what actually happened. BUT if the police unlawfully broken in and a gun battle happened, it could lean towards justifiable but naturally the police will do EVERYTHING to counter that perception. I will be interested to read an “official” report, not that it will mean diddly squat.

    Case in point, the killing of Otto Zehm at the hands of police. They were good at covering their asses until they couldn’t and an officer went to prison.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Otto_Zehm

    • Totally agree. Police lying has gotten so bad (or maybe it’s always been this bad but with the ubiquity of cameras it’s just more apparent) that I don’t trust a word they say unless it’s backed up by video footage, ideally from multiple angles

  11. Interestingly; the gun grabbing sheriff who is exploiting this tragedy to demand more gun control has not done a photo op of the gun or guns. How much you bet that the deputies were shot with a politically correct shotgun?

  12. This story keeps getting even weirder. Found the house where the shooting occurred and it’s a $900,000 house in a nice area. Something tells me that the homeowner heard a ruckus going on in his driveway, armed himself to investigate, ran headlong into the deputies, wasn’t willing to roll over for the deputies since he wasn’t the one being arrested and a gunfight ensued.

    • The homeowner/shooter could have also believed that a robbery was occurring in his driveway and didn’t believe for one second that the men were office were deputies.

    • We had a local pastor and business owner killed here in Spokane Valley by a dipshit cop who was a transplant from California.
      Just Google Creach shooting. The cop was on the pastors business and when the pastor went out to investigate, Creach ended up shot and dead. The cops settled for 2 million. None of the cops statements washed or made sense. A bunch of ass covering by the cops as usual.

    • Based on the pic of the perp on the right, ‘tweaker’ just might explain it.

      Meth addicts get skin-crawling sensations on their faces and claw at their own skin to “Get them off me!”

      Kinda bizarre how an occupant of an $800,000 house can keep it together long enough to make the payments on a home like that.

      EDIT – Then again, maybe not. I did know a meth-head years back. At the time, I didn’t know he was a ‘tweaker’, only years later after I bumped into him again around town and noticed his drastically-changed appearance where he mentioned to me he got busted for dealing crank and got 2 years in the Florida state penitentiary.

      So, yeah, a few do manage to keep it together and remain perfectly functional. In his case, at the time I first knew him (late 90s), I just thought he was kinda high-strung individual. A personality quirk. He wasn’t at the face-picking stage in his addiction at that point…

      • The marks on the mans face are probably from when he was put face down on the ground by the deputies when they were attempting to arrest him. The man also obviously has extremely bad acne scarring and chances are he wears a beard to cover it.

        I found the address by running the plate number of the 4Runner parked in the driveway of the house. It looks like the type of truck one of us would drive (I have the same truck) and were I to stop it nothing about it would say “Tweaker” to me.

  13. only going off the info from this article but Damn! youd think as a sheriffs deputy you would understand the concept of not drawing from the drop but those God complexes the police have these days… instead of just retreating and getting them both at another time or retreating and calling for backup(which it doesn’t say but the guy could have just came out and started blasting if so very different situation) they decided to be stupid and die unfortunate and sad but also very stupid

  14. So there was an “ambush” where the two officers had the opportunity to order the shooter to drop his weapon? And also there’s no bodycam or dash cam footage? Yep, definitely nothing suspicious here at all. Oh and also doors and windows busted but no shots fired after the initial exchange of gunfire? So the perp murdered two cops then barricaded himself inside and surrendered peacefully instead of forcing them to come to him and killing more? Sure, that totally makes sense.

    And of course we all know police would NEVER lie to cover their own asses after they make a fatal mistake, that doesn’t happen /sarc

    • *Maybe* that is indeed exactly how it went down, I’m not saying it’s not… but the story stretches believability and police have been caught blatantly lying often enough that they shouldn’t just be taken at their word

      • Agreed. I am withholding judgment until I see body camera footage and get official, detailed statements from all parties. Too many “I’m just following orders” officers out there for me to blithely trust their institutions. Perhaps they died in the line of duty. Then again maybe they got what they deserved for being jackbooted thugs. No way of telling yet.

  15. Deputy Marshal Ervin.
    .
    Two cops shot and prison time over a theft charge. What the hell did they steal, A house?

  16. We lost two everyday heroes today. My condolences to their families. Will society give justice to their memory and execute the murderer? I can only hope.

  17. This is the house, I don’t know where I got the 900k from but that was the first number that popped up but I was obviously mistaken.

    https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2474-Hampton-Glen-Ct-SW-Marietta-GA-30064/14337186_zpid/

    Given the layout I’m pretty sure the shooter heard or saw something going on in his front yard or driveway and opened fire believing a robbery was occurring. I find it highly unlikely that the deputies confronted the man and ordered him to drop his weapon. In all likelihood the deputies being struck by bullets was their first and only warning that an armed man was trying to stop them. Had it been an actual robbery going on in his front yard we would all be congratulating the man on his good shooting. I put good money on the shooter having no idea that he was shooting at two deputies since the shooting took place shortly before 8:00 p.m. and that’s right at dusk and poor visibility because of low light. I also pulled up the crimes that the fellow was being arrested for and it was theft by receiving. He didn’t even steal anything himself and it’s probably a civil case run awry that should have been handled in a civil court and not a criminal one.

  18. Dug a little deeper and it is as everyone suspected. The guy getting arrested had it coming and was heavily involved with drugs. The charge he was being arrested for was for stealing and pawning stuff from the father of the man that shot and killed the two deputies. The shooter didn’t appear to have a criminal history at all.

  19. Apparently the criminals were not white otherwise that would be in the first line of the news story.

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