GBI investigating fatal shooting of armed man by officers who say he was making threats

AILEY, Ga. (AP) — Authorities in rural southeast Georgia fatally shot a man who was armed with a gun and had made threats against law enforcement officers, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Monday.

GBI agents are investigating the death late Sunday at the end of a five-hour standoff in Montgomery County. The GBI is routinely called on by local law enforcement agencies to investigate shootings involving officers in the state.

Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched Sunday evening to the home of 45-year-old Donald Bonner Jr. after someone called to report that he was randomly firing a gun in his yard, the GBI said in a news release.

The GBI said preliminary evidence shows that Bonner made threats about killing law enforcement officers and went back inside his home when deputies tried to speak with him.

The sheriff’s office called in a SWAT team from the Georgia State Patrol to help deputies serve an arrest warrant on Bonner. Several hours later, the GBI said, they had the home surrounded when officers spotted someone with a gun behind the house. Bonner was shot once and died after being taken to a hospital.

The GBI said Bonner also had two outstanding arrest warrants from March charging him with two counts of aggravated assault on law officers. Bonner was accused then of firing gunshots in the presence of deputies, the GBI said, but the arrest warrants were never served.

Bonner’s death marks the 73rd shooting involving Georgia law officers that the GBI has been asked to investigate since Jan. 1.