Atlanta-area police officer killed checking out suspicious car

Antwan Toney, a 30-year-old police officer with the Gwinnett Police Department in suburban Georgia, died Saturday after he was shot while checking out a suspicious vehicle, police said. Phot courtesy of Gwinnett Police Department

Oct. 21 (UPI) — One man was arrested and another is at-large in the fatal shooting of an Atlanta-area police officer who was shot answering a call about a suspicious vehicle, authorities said Sunday.

Antwan Toney, 30, died Saturday afternoon after being transported to Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, Ga., the Gwinnett County Police Department posted on Twitter.

Toney, who joined the department nearly three years ago, was responding with other officers to a report of a suspicious vehicle parked near Shiloh Middle School around 2:30 pm., police said.

They located the vehicle and shots were fired as they approached it. One of the shots struck Toney and other officers returned fire, police said.

The vehicle fled the scene but respondering officers found it crashed a short distance away with as many as four suspects fleeing the scene on foot.

Shortly after midnight, the county police announced Isaiah Pretlow, 19, of Snellville, had been arrested and charged with aggravated assault. Tafahree Maynard, 18, of Snellville, remained at large on charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

Police Chief Butch Ayers described Toney as “very jovial, very dedicated to his job and to serving his community.”

He is the first Gwinnett officer killed in the line of duty since 1993.

So far this year nationwide, 45 officers have been killed by gunfire — the same number as were killed nationally in all of 2017, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page

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