On the evening of August 7, 2020, Julian Edward Roosevelt Lewis, a 60-year-old Black man from Sylvania, Georgia, was fatally shot by a white Georgia State Patrol trooper. The incident began when Trooper Jacob Gordon Thompson attempted to pull Lewis over for a broken taillight on a rural road in Screven County. Lewis, a semi-retired carpenter, was on his way home from a convenience store where he had purchased a soda for his wife. When Lewis did not immediately stop, a brief chase ensued.
The pursuit ended when Trooper Thompson used a PIT maneuver, causing Lewis's Nissan Sentra to spin into a ditch. Thompson then exited his patrol vehicle and, within seconds, fired a single shot that struck Lewis in the forehead, killing him at the scene. The trooper later reported that he fired in self-defense, claiming Lewis was revving his engine and turning the steering wheel as if to ram him. However, an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found that the crash had likely disabled the vehicle by disconnecting the battery. A GBI agent testified that dashcam footage showed only one second elapsed between the trooper exiting his car and firing his weapon.
In the wake of the shooting, Trooper Thompson was fired from the Georgia State Patrol and arrested a week later on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault. He spent over 100 days in jail before being granted bond. In June 2021, a Screven County grand jury declined to indict Thompson on any charges. Subsequently, the local district attorney announced she would not present the case to another grand jury, and federal prosecutors also closed an inquiry into potential civil rights charges.
As part of the resolution with federal authorities, Thompson agreed to never work in law enforcement again. The state of Georgia later agreed to a $4.8 million settlement with Lewis's family to avoid a civil lawsuit. Attorneys for the family and the Georgia NAACP had described the shooting as a case of racial profiling.
