Deanna Jean Rose, a 27-year-old White woman, was killed on June 20, 2021, inside a home on Hitchcock Road in Dallas, Georgia, after what authorities said began as a domestic dispute with her boyfriend, David Vern Price. According to the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office, Rose herself called 911 at about 6:45 that evening to report trouble between them. When deputies reached the house and went inside, they found Rose dead from a gunshot wound. Nearby, they found Price still alive but suffering from what investigators believed was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
What followed was pieced together from the scene, from neighbors, and from the children who were in the home. Investigators said Rose and Price were in a relationship and had argued just before the 911 call. The sheriff’s office said the evidence suggested that Price shot Rose and then turned the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide attempt. In the first days after the shooting, authorities said detectives were still working to understand exactly what led up to the final moments, describing the case as a tragic chain of events. The release of information was reportedly slowed because investigators had difficulty locating and notifying next of kin for both Rose and Price, since neither had family in the area.
As for arrests and charges, authorities publicly identified David Vern Price, 56, as the suspect and said that if he survived, he would face multiple charges, including murder. But that arrest never happened. Price remained in critical condition after being airlifted to an Atlanta-area hospital, and later died there on June 26, 2021. Because he died from his injuries, the case did not proceed to a prosecution, trial, or conviction. In the end, the official picture left online is of Rose making a desperate call for help, deputies arriving too late to save her, and the only named suspect dying before the criminal case could move forward in court.
