2nd Policeman Hurt as Vehicles Hit Melee
By Rick Badie and Mike Morris, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They were friends from Ohio who spent several years together at Fort McPherson before joining the East Point Police Department in 2002.
Officers James Weinmann and Christopher R. Betts were both twentysomethings, married with children and members of the East Point SWAT team. They relished the short time they’d been on the force, and dutifully accepted the “inherent dangers” that come with wearing the badge, Lt. C.J. Gibson said.
Early Sunday, in a bizarre incident, Betts, 26, was killed and Weinmann was injured after responding to a call about a person walking on I-285. Their response sparked a freeway fight that took the officers into lanes of I-285 traffic, on a section without streetlights. A minivan struck the men and was sideswiped by another vehicle that also hit one of the men.
The unidentified person also was killed. The driver of the second vehicle was still at large Sunday night.
Weinmann, 27, was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center with numerous injuries. His condition was stable late Sunday. He had injuries to his left leg and a fractured pelvis, but they are not life-threatening, Gibson said.
Three days before Christmas, Betts, a former military police officer, leaves behind a wife, Shannon, and a 7-week-old son, Trenton James Betts. Both are expected to arrive in metro Atlanta from Ohio today, Gibson said.
East Point police and City Hall plan to set up a trust fund for donations to the families, said Gibson and East Point Mayor Patsy Jo Hilliard. She and a chaplain visited Weinmann at the hospital early Sunday.
“It’s never a good time for anything like this,” Hilliard said, “but this is especially terrible” during the holidays. "[The city] will talk Monday about what we can do for the families. I hope there’s something we can do. We have such a great police force.”
Details are sketchy about what took place along I-285 near Camp Creek Parkway. The Georgia State Patrol is investigating the incident. The last radio message from the officers to dispatch was that they had pulled up to the scene, Gibson said.
Here’s what authorities know so far:
Around 1 a.m., Weinmann and Betts responded to a suspicious vehicle call along the interstate near Camp Creek Parkway. The driver of the vehicle, police say, started a scuffle with the officers that spilled into traffic.
Georgia State Patrol spokesman Gordy Wright said the driver of the minivan “saw the blue lights, and the patrol cars were off the roadway, parked in the grass.”
“She saw the lights and was moving to the left in order to give [the officers] some room, not knowing they were in the interstate,” Wright said. “She came up on all three in the interstate and hit the two police officers and the violator.”
The woman stopped immediately after hitting the men, and was sideswiped on the passenger side by another vehicle. Immediately after that, a third vehicle struck the rear of the minivan. That driver, from North Carolina, stopped.
Wright said the second vehicle that hit at least one of the men is believed to be a brown, mid- to late-'80s Honda Accord driven by a black female with medium-length hair and wearing “some type of lab coat or smock, white in color.”
He said the Honda driver “stopped, got out of her vehicle, and during the commotion of everything at the scene, at some point, she got back into her vehicle and drove off.”
Wright said no charges will be filed against the 56-year-old driver of the minivan.
“She was doing exactly what she should do when she came up on the blue lights,” he said. “It was just a tragic set of circumstances.”
East Point Police Chief Frank Brown said it’s the first time his department has lost an officer on duty since 1969.
“We know these things are apt to happen, but this department has been very lucky,” Brown said. “This is an unfortunate accident.”
At the hospital, a dozen or so grief-stricken officers huddled together, paced the hallway and sipped coffee. When Hilliard arrived, she hugged Weinmann’s wife, and everybody gathered inside a private room to pray. Weinmann and his wife have three children.
“We’re not 100 percent sure what happened, because Weinmann has been drifting in and out,” Gibson said Sunday, standing near the intensive care unit waiting room. “But it makes no difference whether this was on 285, Main Street or Jones Street. With a confrontation along the highway, this could happen anywhere.”
Gibson, meanwhile, called Betts an “excellent officer” whose death hit the department hard.
“We are aware of the dangers of this job, but we don’t think about it,” he said. “We are professionals, and we will attempt to serve this city, and perform the duties we are sworn to uphold.”