A photo of Officer Oliver Simmonds (foreground) against an image from the scene of an officer-involved shooting on Jan. 15, 2019 (background). (Atlanta Police Department | FOX 5)
ATLANTA – An Atlanta police officer who was assigned to former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Executive Protection Unit has been indicted and suspended without pay for shooting an alleged carjacking suspect at a gas station in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood in January 2019.
Officer Oliver Simmonds was indicted Friday on charges of felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and two counts of violation of oath of public office.
Simmonds, who was off-duty and in plain clothes, pumping gas at the Shell station near the intersection of McDaniel and Whitehall streets around 7:30 p.m. on July 15, 2019. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office at the time said 18-year-old D’Ettrick Griffin “allegedly jumped into the driver’s seat of Simmonds’ unmarked SUV.”
The DA’s office said Simmonds shot Griffin as he tried to steal the city-issued SUV. The GBI said Griffin was able to drive off with the officer’s vehicles, but crashed into two other cars a short distance away.
There was no indication Griffin had a weapon, the GBI said.
In an unprecedented move later that year, then-Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard commissioned a billboard to be placed near the scene asking the public for any tips in the case.
Shortly after the indictment was handed down on Friday, a spokesperson for the Atlanta Police Department said Simmonds was “relieved from his administrative assignment and suspended without pay.”
The department said Simmonds has been on “non-enforcement assignment” since the shooting. He had been on the force for more than 8 years when the shooting happened.
