BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — Barrow County Deputies searching for a man who shot a district attorney investigator, stopped a couple in their vehicle and handcuffed a woman before releasing them a few minutes later.
“Besides the trauma, the PTSD of it, we feel our civil rights were violated and it was humiliating.” said Tiffany Johnson.
Johnson said she and her husband were driving to dinner last Friday night when deputies surrounded their vehicle and ordered them at gunpoint to get out of their vehicle with their hands up.
“He puts me in handcuffs very vigorously and is walking me backward, where I’m almost stumbling,” said Johnson.
Deputies stopped their black Porsche SUV because it matched what was the initial description of a vehicle driven by a man who shot a Gwinnett County District Attorney investigator in Auburn the same evening.
Johnson says 20 minutes before deputies pulled their car over, Gwinnett County Police stopped her husband when he was driving in the area where the roadside shooting took place.
Johnson says police handled that stop much differently than the deputies, and didn’t draw weapons.
“They take his license, run it, they clear him, thank him for his time and he’s on the way,” said Johnson.
Johnson said her husband, a fifty-something Navy veteran has no resemblance to the 27-year shooting suspect, Tyler Moore, who surrendered at the Gwinnett County Detention Center two days following the shooting.
Moore was actually driving a silver-colored SUV.
After Barrow deputies contacted Gwinnett and learned of the earlier stop, they released the couple.
Johnson said she suffered a minor shoulder injury from the handcuffing. But she says the emotional pain of what she and her husband went through is worse.
“They’re politely joking, sorry about this. Wrong place, wrong time. A formal apology would be nice. But just to shine a light on this situation, you know when you realize you have the wrong person, I don’t think a police barricade with guns drawn is the way to handle it,” said Johnson.
The couple says the law enforcement agencies need to communicate better.
The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement, saying:
“Our agency released body camera videos, complete and unedited, from multiple deputies, all depicting the same encounter from multiple different angles. We are aware that WSB does not have the time to show the videos in their entirety, however the portions of the videos Channel 2 News chose to air in their broadcast fall far short of an accurate depiction of the events as they actually occurred.
“We do not feel compelled to apologize for any of our deputies’ actions in this encounter and are proud of the professionalism and dedication to the safety of the community they demonstrated during their search for an armed and dangerous suspect.”