//Slowpoke Law, Fake Machine Gun Leads to Death by Officers

Slowpoke Law, Fake Machine Gun Leads to Death by Officers

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SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constution, GBI, Macon Telegraph

BARTOW, CO – (10-19-2018) Yesterday produced an uncommon number of officer-involved shootings in Georgia. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is reporting three police shootings within 24 hours that left two men dead. The GBI tweeted that Monroe police fatally shot 63-year-old Mahlon Edward Summerour, the State Patrol killed 27-year-old Kenneth Martin Anderson, and Richland police exchanged gunfire with 30-year-old Davion Omar Watson during a car chase.

Watson suffered injuries that weren’t life-threatening, and charges against him are pending.

FAKE GUN

The bureau says Summerour was shot after pointing a weapon at an officer. Authorities later determined the weapon was a replica Thompson submachine gun.

SLOWPOKE LAW

Georgia State Patrol troopers shot and killed a man wanted for parole violation who had been on the run for nearly a year yesterday on I-75 South in Bartow County.

Kenneth Martin Anderson, 27, was the passenger of a vehicle driven with a temporary West Virginia tag by a female driver whose name has not yet been released. She is currently being held in the Bartow County Jail and is expected to be charged by the sheriff’s office, according to the GBI.

GSP pulled her over because of the “Slowpoke Law,” meaning she was driving too slow in the fast lane. Drugs, money and a gun were found. Anderson, who reportedly gave the troopers a fake name, was asked by the troopers to submit to a portable fingerprint scan, after which his real identify was revealed – and that he had an outstanding warrant on him for probation violation for eight months. Anderson was handcuffed after this find.

According to GSP Captain Mark Perry, Anderson “apparently had a weapon behind his back…as he comes out, the trooper was standing a couple of feet from him. He turns with his hands behind him and shoots the trooper in the abdomen…in the vest.”

That trooper has been released from the hospital, according to a news release from the GBI. His injuries reportedly were “blunt force trauma,” while the other troopers were uninjured.

Kenneth Martin Anderson has a long history including an arrest by a Georgia State Trooper in 2011 when Anderson lead the trooper on high speed pursuit in a stolen vehicle on Highway 27 in Rossville Georgia (Walker County) which ended near Lytle Bridge. Anderson was charged with auto theft and other charges.

The incident closed US 411 exit and one right lane for several hours.

Handcuffed Anderson still managed to fire off three rounds before the troopers returned fire, hitting him multiple times. Anderson later died at the Cartersville Hospital.

The GBI is handling the ongoing investigation. This marked the second of three officer-involved shootings in Georgia on Thursday, October 18, 2018. The first reported in Monroe, and the third was in Terrell County Thursday evening. According to the GBI, officer-involved shootings in Georgia this year are on track to pass the 97 recorded in 2017. The Bartow County shooting is the 74th such investigation the agency has opened in 2018.