Associated Press
ATLANTA — Police shot and killed a man Friday suspected of kidnapping his two young children, who may have been in his car when police fired on the suspect, authorities said.
Police said they shot Jairo Bustos, 25, after he rammed an officer’s vehicle and tried to run over him with the car in the northern Atlanta suburb of Roswell.
Officers found Bustos in a parking lot after a nearby driver saw an Amber Alert describing the vehicle and called police, said Lt. James McGee, the city’s police spokesman.
McGhee said the two children - a 9-month-old and a 22-month-old - were “with him (Bustos) when it happened.” But asked if he meant the children were in the car when police fired, he declined to more specific.
The episode unfolded after the children’s mother, 22-year-old Adrian Stearns, called police Thursday to say Bustos had taken off with them in her 1994 Honda Accord. Bustos had recently been evicted from Stearns’ apartment, said Gwinnett County Police spokeswoman Cpl. Illana Spellman.
A child abduction alert was issued and a motorist spotted a car matching the description on a busy north Atlanta highway on Friday morning, said McGee. Police soon found the car in a parking space at an apartment complex, near where the children’s maternal grandparents live, said McGee.
“It went downhill from there,” he said.
When the officer confronted Bustos, he rammed the police patrol car and struck the officer in the knee and arm, said McGee. The officer was slightly injured but will be OK, he said.
The officer then pulled out his weapon and fired into the vehicle, killing Bustos.
The children, meanwhile, are unharmed and with their mother, said Spellman.
The shooting is being investigated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Roswell Police Department. McGee said investigators will seek to determine whether the shooting was justified.
“You have to make split-second decisions,” he said. “The main thing we look for is whether the officer’s life or someone else’s life was in imminent jeopardy. And, at least preliminarily, it seems that’s the case.”