Rayshard Brooks was killed after falling asleep at a Wendy’s drive-through. Garrett Rolfe, the officer who shot him, has been fired and charged with felony murder. Police Chief Erika Shields has stepped down.
On the evening of Friday, June 12, a police officer shot and killed a 27-year-old black man, Rayshard Brooks, outside an Atlanta Wendy’s drive-through. The shooting followed a struggle that began after Brooks failed sobriety tests.
Brooks’s death — caught on video from multiple sources, including a witness’s cellphone —triggered a new wave of demonstrations against police brutality in the city, and ultimately resulted in the resignation of Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields Saturday afternoon. The police officer who killed Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, has been fired, and the other officer involved in the shooting, Devin Brosnan, has been placed on administrative duty. On Wednesday, June 17, the Fulton district attorney announced that Rolfe will face 11 charges, including felony murder; Brosnan will face three charges, including aggravated assault. Brooks’s death had been ruled a homicide by a county medical examiner.
The incident has further galvanized anti-racism and police brutality protests in Atlanta, which had already seen large demonstrations in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis nearly three weeks prior.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), Atlanta police officers were called to the scene around 10:30 pm after receiving a complaint of a man sleeping in his vehicle, which was blocking the drive-through and forcing other cars to drive around it.
The police officers gave Brooks sobriety tests, and he failed, according to investigators. The GBI claimed in an initial statement released Saturday — based on body camera footage and police and witness accounts — that this is what transpired following the testing:
After failing the test, the officers attempted to place the male subject into custody. During the arrest, the male subject resisted and a struggle ensued. The officer deployed a Taser. Witnesses report that during the struggle the male subject grabbed and was in possession of the Taser. It has also been reported that the male subject was shot by an officer in the struggle over the Taser.
The GBI later reported in an update that it had obtained surveillance from Wendy’s and reviewed a viral video captured by a witness’s cellphone that was posted to social media, saying video evidence showed Brooks grabbing the Taser and pointing it at an officer.
“These new videos indicate that during a physical struggle with officers, Brooks obtained one of the officer’s Tasers and began to flee from the scene,” the statement reads. “Officers pursued Brooks on foot and during the chase, Brooks turned and pointed the Taser at the officer. The officer fired his weapon, striking Brooks.”
Taken together, that viral video, body camera footage, dash cam clips, and video from one of the restaurant’s surveillance cameras provide a more complete picture of the incident.
The body camera clips show the first part of the encounter. Brosnan, an officer who joined the police department in 2018, is the first law enforcement official on the scene. His body camera shows him going up to Brooks’s car and banging on the window until Brooks wakes up and opens the door. Brooks tells Brosnan he doesn’t need medical attention and is just tired; Brosnan tells him to park and take a nap.
Brosnan returns to his squad car, saying, “I don’t want to deal with this dude right now.” When he returns, Brooks tells the officer he is in the area visiting his mother’s grave and marking a series of birthdays, including his own and his girlfriend’s. Throughout the encounter, he appears slightly disoriented, unsure of exactly where he is.
