Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — An undercover drug officer who shot and killed a minister in Toccoa in September was not a certified peace officer at the time, the minister’s widow alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court.
The lawsuit, filed by Abigail Ayers, also claims Stephens County Deputy Billy Shane Harrison was not properly trained and the sheriff who assigned him to the joint Mountain Judicial Circuit Narcotics Criminal Investigation and Suppression Team should have known not to put him on the team.
Claims in the lawsuit allege unsavory sides of Harrison and his partner, Chance Oxner --- including allegations of criminal activity --- much like an investigative file on the shooting said the Rev. Jonathan Ayers had a secret life involving a yearslong relationship with a prostitute.
The lawsuit also says Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley and Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell, who assigned Harrison and Oxner to the task force, ignored problems the two deputies allegedly had.
Lawyers for the defendants in the lawsuit deny all the accusations.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Gainesville, the preacher’s widow is seeking compensation for her pain and suffering and the loss of income that her 28-year-old husband would have earned.
She accuses the two deputies and their supervisor, Kyle Bryant, of wrongful death, assault and battery, false arrest and subjecting her husband to mental and physical pain. The lawsuit says the two sheriffs abdicated their responsibilities. The complaint also says Shirley and Harrison were negligent because the deputy worked even though he had not kept up with his training and he was not a certified law enforcement officer.
“Billy was trained on the weapon he was using at the time of this incident,” Harrison’s personal attorney, Gus McDonald, said. “In addition, Billy has been trained on the use of force multiple times throughout his law enforcement career. The allegation that Billy was not certified at the time of this incident is false.”
Terry Williams --- the attorney for Harrison, Oxner, the sheriffs and the task force --- said the officers were “well qualified and experienced and have good reputations.” He said the evidence will show the use of deadly force was reasonable and “in response to Mr. Ayers’ actions, which placed the officers at risk of serious bodily injury or death. It is most unfortunate that Mr. Ayers decided to flee and thereby endanger the officers. We regret the loss of Mr. Ayers’ life and extend sympathies to his family.”
The Sept. 1 shooting, captured on surveillance video, was the subject of an unrelenting debate in Toccoa, a northeast Georgia city of 9,000.
Ayers, the pastor at Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, inadvertently stepped into the middle of an undercover drug operation when he was seen with a suspected drug dealer, and admitted prostitute, just as the task force was planning to arrest her in a drug transaction. The undercover officers saw the woman get out of Ayers’ Honda at an extended-stay motel in Toccoa.
The minster drove to a gas station to use an ATM, and that is where Harrison, Oxner and Bryant, wearing plain clothes and in an unmarked Escalade, tried to stop him.
According to the video, they tried to block Ayers’ Honda with their SUV and Oxner and Harrison got out.
The deputies said they showed Ayers their badges and identified themselves as police officers, but the minister wouldn’t stop.
Harrison said he shot because he thought Oxner had been hit and killed and because he feared he, too, would be hurt.
Ayers, wounded, crashed his Honda into a utility pole down the street from the gas station. He died later at a hospital.
A grand jury determined in December that there was nothing to support bringing criminal charges.
Copyright 2010 Atlanta Journal-Constitution