In the early morning hours of Saturday, April 28, 2018, the family of Shukri Ali Said, a 36-year-old Somali-American woman, made a call for help from their home in a Johns Creek, Georgia, subdivision. Said, who reportedly struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was experiencing a mental health crisis. Her family, concerned for her well-being, contacted 911 hoping to get her medical assistance after she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and left the house on foot.
The dispatch sent Johns Creek Police Department officers to the scene shortly after 7 a.m. for a report of a person with a knife who had allegedly threatened a family member.
Officers located Said a short distance from her home, near the intersection of Abbotts Bridge Road and Sweet Creek Road. According to official reports, she was armed with the knife and did not respond to multiple commands from the officers to drop her weapon. The police stated that they attempted to de-escalate the situation by using less-lethal force, deploying a Taser and firing a foam projectile, but Said did not relinquish the knife. Following these attempts, two officers fired their service weapons, striking her multiple times. Emergency medical aid was rendered at the scene before she was transported to Emory Johns Creek Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. A subsequent preliminary autopsy revealed she had been shot five times in the neck, head, and chest.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was called to lead an independent investigation into the officer-involved shooting, a standard procedure in such cases. The GBI later identified the officers who fired their weapons as Phil Nguyen and Richard Gray; two other officers, Ken Kennebrew and Derrick Wilson, deployed Tasers. All four officers were initially placed on administrative leave but later returned to active duty. The case was to be turned over to the Fulton County District Attorney's Office for review. The family of Shukri Ali Said, represented by civil rights organizations, questioned the use of lethal force, stating they had called for medical help, not a law enforcement response that would end in her death. A year after the incident, it was reported that two of the four officers involved had declined to be interviewed by the prosecutor's office. The family later filed a lawsuit in connection with her death.
