Former officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks turns himself in

Garrett Rolfe, the former Atlanta police officer charged after he fatally shot Rayshard Brooks has turned himself into the authorities. 

Rolfe was charged Wednesday on 11 counts, including felony murder and aggravated assault following Brooks’s death.  

Video captured of the incident showed Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, fleeing after grabbing an officer’s stun gun in a Wendy’s parking lot, appearing to turn with the stun gun before Rolfe shot him.

Brooks later died in the hospital after surgery. 

Rolfe was fired the day after the shooting, and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned shortly thereafter.

Prosecutors, announcing the charges against Rolfe on Wednesday, alleged Rolfe said “I got him” after fatally shooting Brooks and before kicking his body while Rolfe’s partner, Devin Brosnan, stood on Brooks’s shoulder.

Brosnan is charged on three counts, including violations of oath and aggravated assault, but remains on the force on administrative duty.

Neither officer rendered any aid to Brooks for more than two minutes, Fulton County District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr. alleged.

Since the charges against Rolfe were announced, the Atlanta Police Department said it has experienced an “higher than usual number” of officers calling in sick, but officials denied rumors of a mass walkout.

“We do have enough officers to cover us through the night,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) told CNN Wednesday. “Our streets won’t be any less safe because of the number of officers who called out.”

Brooks’s death came after weeks of protests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis police custody after former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for several minutes despite Floyd’s protests that he was unable to breathe.

While Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests, demonstrators have also invoked the names and deaths of other unarmed black Americans including Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man from Georgia killed in an encounter with a white father and son who pursued him while he jogged through a neighborhood.

In addition, Breonna Taylor black a resident of Louisville, Ky., was killed in her home by detectives executing a so-called no-knock warrant.