By Joe Johnson
Athens-Clarke County police Friday night killed a man in the sixth officer-involved shooting this year and the third in less than three weeks.
According to police, officers responded shortly after 8 p.m. to a noise complaint on Royale Road that stemmmed from a dispute between two neighbors on Royale Road, in which one neighbor threatened to shoot the other.
Upon locating the man who reportedly made the threat, a pair of officers tried to question him but he drew a handgun and fired several times at the officers, according to police.
The officers returned fire and shot the man, who later died at the hospital, police said.
The man was said by police to be a 45-year-old Asian male, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of his next of kin.
In accordance with ACCPD policy, both officers were placed on administrative leave, pending a preliminary review of the facts, police said.
Police said they requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to investigate the shooting.
The first police shooting in 2019 happened in March when a man was shot and killed by officers as he approached them while pointing a realistic-looking pellet gun in a church parking lot on West Lake Drive.
The following month, another man was shot and killed while brandishing a gun on Hull Road. Police wanted to speak to the man as part of a peeping Tom complaint when the man pointed a shotgun at the officers.
On July 1, officers fatally shot a man who was behaving irrationally prior to charging at an officer with a knife at the entrance of River Club apartments off Macon Highway.
On Oct. 6, a police officer shot and seriously wounded a man who police said attacked him with a machete when the officer responded to a report of domestic violence at University Garden Apartments on Baxter Drive.
On Oct. 14, a 54-year-old woman was fatally shot on Sartain Drive as she approached an officer while saying she had a gun and a knife, and then charged at the officer with a knife raised over her head.
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