An officer, responding to reports of a suspicious person, shot and killed an unarmed man who was running around in a metro Atlanta apartment complex naked.
The officer fired two shots when the man charged at him, said Cedric Alexander, the public safety director of DeKalb County.
But given that the man was not carrying a weapon, the police department immediately turned over the case to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations for an independent probe.
“What I have requested here [is] a result of what’s going on currently across this country as it relates to police shootings,” Alexander told reporters.
The officer was white; the deceased man was African-American, Alexander said.
The incident took place Monday afternoon at an apartment complex in Chamblee, a suburb of Atlanta.
Someone called 911 to report a man “acting deranged, knocking on doors and crawling around naked,” Alexander said.
When the officer arrived, the man charged at him, Alexander said.
“The officer called him to stop while stepping backward, drew his weapon and fired two shots,” he said.
The man, struck twice in the upper body, died. Police later learned he was a resident at the complex.
“I can only reasonably assume that if he was running around the apartment complex naked, I believe we can make the assumption there may have been some mental health experience that he might have been having,” Alexander said.
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