On the evening of August 7, 2020, 60-year-old Julian Edward Roosevelt Lewis of Sylvania, Georgia, was fatally shot by a Georgia State Patrol trooper after a traffic stop for a broken taillight on a rural Screven County road. Lewis, a semi-retired carpenter who had stopped to buy a soda for his wife, did not stop immediately and a brief chase followed. The pursuit ended when Trooper Jacob Gordon Thompson used a PIT maneuver, sending Lewis’s Nissan Sentra into a ditch. Thompson then exited his patrol car and within seconds fired one shot that struck Lewis in the forehead, killing him at the scene.

Thompson said he fired in self-defense, alleging Lewis was revving the engine and turning the wheel as if to ram him. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe found the crash likely disabled the Sentra by disconnecting the battery, and a GBI agent testified dashcam footage showed about one second passed between Thompson leaving his vehicle and firing. Thompson was fired, arrested a week later on felony murder and aggravated assault charges, held over 100 days before bond, and later not indicted by a Screven County grand jury.

Are there witnesses or local residents who can add detail about the chase, the crash, or the moments immediately before the shot was fired?