The Georgia Bureau of Investigation issued its statement on its investigation into the shooting in at a Motel 6 in Marietta that left the a 26-year-old Atlanta man dead, and a Marietta police officer injured.

The statement from the GBI follows:

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating an officer involved shooting in Marietta, Georgia. The Marietta Police Department asked the GBI to conduct an independent investigation on July 7, 2022. One man has died. One officer sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Preliminary information indicates that at 6:26 p.m., Marietta P.D. officers were on patrol near the Motel 6 on 2360 Delk Road in Marietta, Georgia.  Officers approached a car and made contact with the people in it.  During the interaction, the driver, identified as Rafael Esteban Ramirez, age 26, of Atlanta, reversed his car, hitting a marked police car. Ramirez put the car in drive and accelerated, pinning an officer between the marked car and his own, and dragging and injuring the officer. Officers fired their weapons at Ramirez, hitting him. 

The officer was treated and released from Kennestone Hospital. Ramirez was taken to Kennestone Hospital where he was pronounced deceased.  

The GBI will conduct an independent investigation. Once complete, the case will be given to the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office for review. 

This is 66^th officer involved shooting that the GBI has been asked to investigate in 2022.

The GBI’s role in officer-involved shootings

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation routinely investigates the shooting of individuals by police officers, as well as any time an officer discharges a firearm while on duty, at the request of the police agency involved in the shooting.

Natalie Ammons, the Deputy Director of the GBI’s Office of Public Affairs explained to us how the system works.

Police agencies are not required to request outside investigation of officer involved shootings, and there is no formal agreement between the GBI and local police departments.

But police agencies make the request so that an independent agency does the investigation in an incident involving their own officers.

The investigations are carried out by Special Agents in a regional office within the area where the police agency is located. Cobb County, and much of the rest of metro Atlanta, is in the GBI’s Region 10, based in Conyers.

In Region 10, officer involved shootings and corruption investigations are the primary investigations Special Agents do, while in more rural areas with fewer police resources the agents handle a wider range of criminal investigations.

There is no special unit or division that conducts the investigation of officer involved shootings.

The announcements of the investigations can be found at the GBI’s press release web page.